Wally and the Three Kings
by Venusian
Summary: Wally is a normal teenager. He's pathetic at math, hopelessly in love with his roommate, and is the only one of his friends without a future. His life is normal. Until a king appears in his locker. Rated M for...well, really, everything.
1. Chapter 1

**Joker**

**"Be who you are and say what you think, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."**

**Dr. Seuss **

It's 9:45 in the morning, I have my hand on a donut, and a guy walks into the store and pulls a gun.

Thursdays. Gotta love 'em.

Kal, of course, knows what to do. I still don't know where exactly he comes from, some faraway land that he'll never actually name, but they must teach their students some wicked levels of self control—Kal's getting a pistol pointed right at his face and seems like he's fighting the urge to yawn.

"Register. Open it!"

The robber isn't a man on the edge of poverty or anything—he looks near my own age, like a college student. Clean clothes, a fresh haircut…except I know I've never seen him around campus. The guy's got skin the color of milk, a sleeveless red shirt, and more hair on his arms than an Italian taxi driver based in Brooklyn. Not a good combo.

Kal opens the register like he's just going through the motions. He's been robbed before. 7-Elevens aren't exactly known for their impenetrable security, and he's been working at this one for a year. This'll be the…sixth time? Seventh?

Personally, it's my first. I'm a virgin in more ways than just sex.

Connor isn't. He's got the Super Big Gulp in one hand, brimming over with Mountain Dew, and looks like he wants to crush it. Robin whispers at him, "Be cool. Just let him go."

"Wish he'd hurry up."

"Shut it!" the gunman barks over at us. I've still got one hand reaching mid-pluck for that donut. I don't think I've ever held this still for so long before. Not while I was awake, anyway.

"Well, hurry your ass up, then!" Connor's got a lot of good traits. He's loyal, doesn't much care about what others think of him, and the girls all think he's hot for some reason I'll never get. I guess it's another one of his good traits. He's got plenty of them, I'm sure. But being silent isn't one of them. "Gonna get a ticket," he mutters. His jaw clenches.

The gunman points the gun our way. "You got something to say to me, boy? You think I'm worried about some cop _writing me up _for this?"

"Not _you_, idiot." Connor's practically spitting the words. "Me. I'm illegally parked. The longer you keep us held up, the closer that meter maid's getting to my car."

Robin's hand comes up and slaps his own forehead, gritting his teeth and hissing, "_Shut up, _would you?"

"You think I'm just gonna let this bastard walk all over us without at least giving him some grief?" Connor looks at Robin, shocked. If there's one thing Connor won't tolerate, it's someone telling him to act weak. "Grow a pair, man."

I really, _really_ want to give Connor a swift kick in the balls. If he's retching on the ground, then he might not have the breath to talk anymore. The gunman's got a slight smirk on his face, and the gun's trembling tight in his grip. His arm is probably getting tired. I know mine sure is, and I don't even have a gun.

For a second I stop thinking about how heavy your average pistol is, and I hope that there's napkins over by the coffee pitchers. My fingers have dipped onto the top of the Boston Crème I wanted, and now they're covered in chocolatey goodness.

Mr. Gunman decides that he's not gonna have any more of Connor's lip, and starts walking towards him.

"All right," Kal tries to get the guy out. "The money's right here." God, his voice is like the tone of someone speaking through a drive-through voice box. "You wanna take off before somebody else comes in? Like, say, a cop?"

For a second the gunman hesitates, mulling his options over.

For the first time, I speak up and say, "Cops show up here all the time. There's coffee and donuts, y'know?" They'd better not show up. I don't care about the place getting robbed, but the cops'll have to pry this donut out of my cold dead hands.

Mr. Gunman points the gun over at me, Robin and Connor. They're both standing side-by-side, over at the soda fountain. "Wallets, boys," he says. "Snappy."

"Are you—!"

Robin shuts Connor up with a swift elbow jab to the ribs. "You're gonna get us _shot_."

"There's _fifty_ some dollars just waiting for him on the damn _counter—!"_

"Oh for the luvva…" Robin digs into his back pocket and pulls out a wallet. "Gotta lead by example, don't I?" He holds the wallet out and tosses it at the gunman, and it bounces off his chest and hits the tile. "Take it. And hey, shoot this idiot while you're at it."

The gunman doesn't pick the wallet up. Probably knows that as soon as he bends over, one of us three are gonna rush him-and don't even bother thinking it's gonna be me, by the way. So instead he jabs the muzzle closer to Robin and shakes his head. "I ain't stupid, kid"—(and it's all I can do not to point out all evidence to the contrary)—"so you pick it up, and hand it over. No trying to be a hero, huh?"

I peek out the front door and sees the meter maid car pull up. Connor's gonna lose it pretty soon. If he makes a run for the door, I know that he's gonna get a bullet in the back. But I also know he's never gonna give up his wallet without a fight. And he didn't bring his own gun to the gunfight.

Robin doesn't move. He just stays there, frozen, caught, both hands up at his side, palms facing out.

"You," the gunman says, "might wanna think about doing some—" and the next thing everyone knows, the gunman is on both knees cradling a broken trigger finger that's bent in the wrong direction, and the gun is in the hands of my thirteen-year-old schoolmate.

And, like it's an afterthought to the whole comedic scene, the door to the women's bathroom opens up and out walks Megan, still drying her hands with a paper towel. She has enough time to freeze, absorb the scene with both wide eyes, and ask "Wha…?"

That's when Connor decides to work off his frustration.

_9:55 a.m._

Some cops show up, of course, and start asking questions. We go down to the station and they ask us about the robbery, what happened, and how I managed to not do anything while everyone else did something. Christ, even _Megan_ helped by using her cell to call the cops, once she found out what was going on.

When we get out of the police station, the media's waiting for us. "That's them!" someone yells, and before any of us have enough time to blink, the whole crowd is in our faces, shooting atomic-blast flashbulbs, shouting questions. We answer as fast as we can, except for Connor—he looks like he's about to start swinging again. Kal takes the initiative and does most of the talking. I can already imagine the headlines.

Something like LOCAL TEENS FOIL ROBBERY would be nice. But they'll probably print something more along the lines off RICH KIDS DO GOOD. I, for one, would get a really good laugh out of that, seeing as how I'm the only one in our group that doesn't actually have a seven-figure bank account.

After maybe ten minutes of questions, the press lets us go and we walk back to the parking lot. Connor's Aston Martin has got a nice big ticket slapped under the windshield wiper.

"Gotta love 'em," I say.

Connor shoots me a look. "What?"

"Thursdays."

One week later, on the very next Thursday, I'm graced with the presence of the first king. And it's all because of that damn robbery.


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

**"We are the music-makers,  
And we are the dreamers of dreams,  
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,  
And sitting by desolate streams.  
World-losers and world-forsakers,  
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;  
Yet we are the movers and shakers,  
Of the world forever, it seems."**

**Arthur O'Shaughnessy**

Allow me to give you a glimpse into the Wonderful World of Wally West.

I play a lot of Trivial Pursuit with the gang. At least a few nights a week.

It's what we do.

It isn't very hard, and it's the only game we all enjoy without arguing too much over the rules. Whoever gets the questions right gets bragging rights. Usually it's Robin.

Robin (not his real name, by the way. His real name is Dick, or Richard, whichever you like, but we never could all agree on what it was supposed to be, so Kal decided we should give him an equally embarrassing nickname. One day Richard/Dick tried getting a suntan and forgot to protect his chest. The first thing out of my mouth was, "How d'ya like that? It's the first red-breasted robin of spring." Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week) is a miniature case of kid perfection. He's only fifteen, but the guy's already so multi-talented that he's qualified for the title of Renaissance Man. Mathlete, gymnastics team, chess whiz. Since he's the adopted son of a billionaire and the world knows it, he's been given self-defense training that borders on military extremes—that's how he managed to get the gun away from our plucky robber friend. At the game table, just like me, he never shuts up. He's my best bud. He gets lots of dates.

Kal (which is _part_ of his real name; I think the proper full name is like Kal'dur Ham or something weird like that) is always quiet, acting as referee most of the time. He's got these wicked awesome tattoos on both arms that you probably couldn't duplicate with the entire cast of _Miami Ink_. The only reason he works at a gas station is because he likes to work, and thinks that having a job keeps himself "up to standard". Not sure whose standard he's being measured against, but hey, to each his own, right? We all drop by the gas station every now and then to goof off and get drinks—no luck on snagging free beers, but that doesn't stop me from trying. No one but the principal of our school knows where the hell he came from, but he speaks perfect English and probably knows some Far Flung Kung Fu or something. I've never seen him fight, but he's trim and fit, and the guy's got a presence you can feel. And he gets lots of dates.

Connor Kent (real name) is tall, country boy strong, inherited around fifty gajillion dollars from some oil inheritance by his great-half-uncle or something, and has a touchy relationship with his dad (The world worships the man like a modern day messiah, but he barely talks to Connor, and that rubs the younger Kent just a little on the wrong side). He's got the opposite of Kal's presence—you kind of get the idea that Connor can heat up like a supernovae when properly pissed, and that's just by standing next to the guy. He only wears black T shirts and jeans, and he doesn't talk much. Got that whole serious thing going for him, and it works. As you can probably guess, he gets lots of dates.

Megan Morse (I'll let you figure out if that's her real name or not) is a nymph. I'll get back to that later. For now, just know three things; First, she gets more nights out on the town than all of us _combined_. Second, she has red hair, green eyes, the most beautiful crooked-shy smile in the world, lovely legs, and only wears skirts. Third, she is my roommate.

Now we get to me.

Before I even go into me, I should tell you a few other things.

1—By the age of seventeen, Mozart was already writing sonatas and selling them to royalty.

2—Joan of Arc had already started a revolution by her seventeenth birthday.

3—David Copperfield had already begun performing his own magic television specials by the time he was seventeen.

Then there's Wally West, also seventeen…

During the robbery, I'd begun to think about what they'd put on my tombstone. I had to take stock of my life. What was I?

Science whiz—and not anywhere near a great one. I was just a tutor, making enough money to survive.

No real career plans, though graduation was a few months away.

Class clown, since grade six. Plenty of chuckles have occurred because of my penchant for fast talking.

But no real admiration from anybody. Nobody ever said, "Now _there's_ a guy I'd like to become" when looking in my general direction.

I realized that there were people everywhere, all around me, forwards and backwards in time even, all achieving some kind of awesomeness. Since that moment, I've been constantly asking myself _Well, Wally—what have you really achieved in these past seventeen years? What can you put on that tombstone? _The answer's simple.

Leave it blank.

I share a two-room duplex with Megan—we'll get back to her again soon, don't worry—and most of the time my door is closed. I have a TV that doesn't pick up satellite, but luckily my laptop can play DVDs. I've got a bootleg movie collection, a cell phone that almost never rings, and a fridge that buzzes constantly.

I cook my meals in microwaves.

I wash my clothes downtown.

For transportation, I either take the bus or bum a ride with my friends.

I use my laptop to go online around four hours every day.

My porn collection is stored on a 48 gigabyte USB, and it's running out of memory space.

I'm a virgin.

That's my life. My hair is ginger, my skin doesn't tan, my muscles are impressively normal. The only reason Megan and I are actually sharing a place on campus is because we both lied and said we're half-siblings. This way we can both afford the rent.

Let's get back to Megan. Like I said, Megan's a nymph. She doesn't think of sex the way you and I do—it's not an achievement, or a promise of love, or a way to make babies when it comes to her. It's just another part of everyday life, something that makes her happy. Megan can have sex as simply and unconsciously as a guy like Connor would go to the gym. Go in, do what you need to do, achieve satisfaction, and then shower.

She always said she likes me too much to have sex with me, because she doesn't do it with friends that she actually cares for…and personally, I've never tried to get her naked. I'm too much of a wuss.

Oh sure, I've flirted and cast out more lines than a Cuban fisherman on a pier. Out of everyone in our group, I'm the one who is the most blatantly flirtatious. And I'm pretty sure I'm the only one still a virgin. I've had two girlfriends, lucky me, and they both broke up with me about two weeks into the relationship. One of them told me I was the worst kisser she'd ever had. The other one always laughed uncontrollably whenever I wrapped my arms around her and my fingers got close to her bra. My tongue work is particularly worse than my finger skills, but hey, what can I do?

Doesn't matter. It's only sex. Sex does not make you into a man.

That's what I tell myself, anyway.

I only know how to lie to one person.

Getting back to Megan, though. I should really feel complimented that she won't even kiss me because she likes me too much, shouldn't I? It makes so much sense, like _everything_ girls say and do, doesn't it?

But then, when I feel the selfish angry thoughts coming at me late at night, I remind myself why I accept it.

Megan ran away from home.

She used to live in Marshall, Texas. She never really had much of a family. And she only ever has sex with guys. _I've_ had more relationships than she's had. She never allows love to enter the picture. Her relatives were a collection of those beat-the-hell-out-of-each-other folks that turn every holiday into an eviction notice. I think she loved them, and all they ever did was hurt her.

That's why she's here. That's why she refuses to love whoever shares her bed.

At least, that's what I think.

_12:30 p.m. Thursday, March 3._

It's about a week until the hubbub from the robbery dies down around campus. I get out of class and head for my locker, wondering if my Spanish teacher is going to be wearing that low-cut top of hers that makes the world a _much_ bouncier place to be in.

It's a split second before I open the locker that I feel it.

Feel something.

I open the locker door, and a playing card drops out. I snag it between two fingers before it hits the tile, and I shiver when the electricity-ness that fills the card passes into my skin and up my arm and into my heart and brain. For a moment, it feels like the world stops to watch as I turn the card over and see its face.

It's the King of Clubs.

I flip it over again, and read a message written in tidy scrawl:

_8500 NW 167 street. Midnight. Don't get caught._

The writing is blue ink. I read it slowly, carefully, letting my fingers hold the card with gentle baby hands.

I look around me.

No one's watching.

I pocket the card, grab my books, and head for my class. Without a doubt, this is the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. I ask myself, _Who would send me something like this? Could it be Robin? Connor? Kal?_ I have no idea. If it's a joke, then they need to work on their techniques.

There's something in me that whispers to throw the card out—burn it, cut it up, toss it into a vat of acid, destroy it completely—but I also feel some kind of foreign pang; it's like the feeling you get when someone advises you to throw out a Christmas present you didn't really want. Sure, you've got no need for a sweater with glitter dinosaurs all over it, but you know that your Aunt Ginny spent money and time getting it to _you_, and you should at least hold onto it for a while.

_Maybe it's supposed to be mine_. _For a little while._


	3. Chapter 3

**3**

**"Waiting hurts. Forgetting hurts. But not knowing which decision to take is the worst of suffering."  
**

**Paulo Coelho**

_11:00 p.m._

I can't sleep. My mind just won't shut up.

I sit on my bed. I stare at the king. I read the message over and over again.

It's someone I know. That's for certain.

It's someone who wants to watch me jump through hoops for them. Someone who knows me well enough that they'll feel certain I wouldn't just throw the card in the trash. Which _should_ make it either Kal, Connor, Robin, or Megan.

I scratch Kal off the list almost immediately. The guy just doesn't have that kind of humor.

Then Megan. Highly unlikely. She just doesn't seem the type to do this.

Connor? Perhaps. But again, it just doesn't seem like him. Connor's got a sense of humor, but the guy is like a crystal clear lake—deep in some places, shallow in others, but you can always see straight into him. He doesn't hide anything. Sneaking isn't his way of having a laugh.

That leaves Robin.

I tell myself that it's most likely him. We've been friends for a long time. He shares my sense of humor the most. But I don't know…Robin's not a prankster. Out of everyone in the group, _I'm_ the one most likely to do something like this.

My gut feeling says it's none of them.

_12:30 p.m. Friday_

"You got it here with you?" Robin asks.

I pull it out of my binder. The king is placed inside an airtight ziplock sandwich bag. It might be evidence sometime in the future, so nothing's gonna touch it, no one's gonna breathe on it, no fingerprints other than mine are gonna be added to it.

"It wasn't any of you guys, was it?" I ask. There's just no other way to get around it. I have to ask them outright.

Megan and Kal shake their heads.

Connor laughs. "I think we _both_ know I don't have the creativity for something like this," he says.

Megan comes to his defense immediately. "You've got creativity!" she says. "Remember that essay you wrote about racism against white students?"

"That wasn't creativity," he shrugs. "I was just looking for a new spin on the whole racism thing."

We all look at Megan.

"What?" she asks.

"Was it you, Megan?" Kal asks.

"Of course not. If I wanted Wally to do anything, I'd just ask him."

"And you, Kal?" I ask.

Kal shakes his head. "If Connor's not creative enough, and Megan's too honest, I'm somewhere between the two. I don't even know how to play any card games."

"I know a few magic tricks," Robin offers.

We're all staring at him immediately.

He rolls his eyes. "Okay." He sits up straight like he's beginning his defense. "I'd say that out of all of us, I'd be most likely to think up something this weird—"

"It's not _that_ weird," I say. "Don't give yourself too much credit, Rob."

"Can I go on, oh Impulsive Interruptous One?"

I nod.

"Good. Now, as I was saying—it's definitely not me. I do, however, have a few ideas that might help us find out." He holds out one hand. "Can I see it?"

"Just don't take it out of the bag," I say before sliding it over across the table.

He looks at it closely, turning it this way and that, flipping it over to read the lettering, opening the bag to smell it, then shutting it before exhaling. "Okay, first off, the writer is male."

"You can analyze handwriting?"

He grins. "It's a hobby." He points to the edges of the card. "See how they're kinda soft? It's old. This is actually a playing card that's been played in a few games. Most likely it's got more fingerprints on it than the CIA has on file."

We all stay quiet. Megan makes a hand motion that says, _go on._

"The only other thing I can tell is that the guy who wrote this doesn't smoke."

"That's it?"

"Hey, Wally, I just cut your list of suspects in half."

"Oh, yeah, sure Rob. Now all I gotta do is interview every male on the planet. Oh, and can't forget the lesbians, either."

"Can I say something?" Megan raises her hand. "I have a theory on how and why it ended up in your locker."

I wait. She gathers herself and her thoughts—for someone who is really good with guys, Megan's remarkably shy at times.

"It all probably stems from what happened during the robbery. Somebody read about it in the papers or saw it on the news and thought to themselves, _Hey, here's a couple of people who can actually do some good. Just the kind of kids that the world needs._" She smiles, but then turns serious. "Something's probably going to happen at that place and time, Wally. And you'll have to react to it."

I think about it and decide.

I choose my words carefully.

"This is really gonna suck."

"How come?" she asks.

"How _come_? What if there's a weapons deal going down , or a gang war or something? I'm supposed to put on a cape and stop it? That's not exactly an act of common sense."

Kal shrugs, drinks his water, and says, "Maybe that's why you should do it. Common sense is something a lot of people lack in the first place. But it's also pretty common for people to never do anything because it _might_ be dangerous."

Connor pipes in with, "And if you do nothing, you'll sped the rest of your life wondering what this is all about, won't you?" He's grinning, for crying out loud.

_5:15 p.m. Friday_

The sun's going down. I'm sitting on the roof of my apartment building.

Megan comes up the fire escape, and I tell her that I want to see what the card's got to show me. It's a lie. I look at her, bathed in the gold and red of the setting sun, and wish we could lay down right there and make love on the rooftop.

Dive inside each other.

Take each other.

Make each other moan.

Nothing's gonna happen, though.

"Do you have a plan?" she asks.

I nod. "Oh yeah. Mapquest it for directions, Google Earth it for a preview of the surroundings, and approaching via taxi. If I see anything I don't like, then my Irish ass is out of there."

"Why don't you wait for everyone to go with you?"

"Did you get a card in _your_ locker, Megan?"

She stays silent. It's a comfortable silence, though. Like she understands me so perfectly that she doesn't even have to say a word.

"That's why. Whatever this is, whatever kind of prank or joke or whatever, it's mine. And if I'm really lucky, it'll be something special. It'll be a Call To Adventure like you hear in all the old stories."

"You're such a fantasy geek, Wally."

"We prefer the term _Romantics_, thank you very much."

We sit there, watching the sunset, drinking some cheap knockoff soda straight from the bottle, passing it back and forth like it's a bottle of gin or something, and we're the cool, world-weary drinkers of hard times past. Ha. I've never even gotten into a schoolyard scuffle.

Megan. I love how she sits cross-legged, wearing that skirt. She looks up at the sky, and points out a lone twinkling star.

"Star light, star bright," she says. "First star I see tonight."

"That," I tell her, "is Jupiter."

She raises an eyebrow. "Really?"

I stand up, dust my pants off with both hands, and make my way to the fire escape. "Nope."

Her chirp of laughter follows me down the steps, and I smile.

_You never know,_ I think to myself as I head for my computer. _One day there might be a few people who'll say, "Yep, Joan of Arc was fighting a war and Mozart was writing music that made kings weep, both when they were seventeen. And at that same age, Wally West found the balls to follow the directions of that first card."_

When that thought passes, I look back up at Megan, the shining star above her, and I tell myself to get a grip. An adventure requires a clear head.

I was wrong, though. I wasn't going to a romantic adventure setting or anything.

I was going to a nightmare. A little slice of hell on earth.


	4. Chapter 4

**"Pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It his his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."**

**C.S. Lewis**

_11:45 p.m. Friday_

It's nearly midnight when the cabbie drops me off by the house. "Remember," I tell him. "Be back in one hour, right here, okay?"

"No worries," he says. His accent's Australian.

I pay the guy, shut the door, and make my way down the cracked sidewalk. What a crummy neighborhood. The streets are more banged up than Baghdad, there's garbage everywhere, and I'm certain I'd be seeing tied up pairs of shoes hanging from telephone wires if there were any telephone wires to begin with. This is beyond the hood. This is downright ghetto.

I make for the edge of the street, where 8500 is located. It's a ramshackle old house built about thirty years ago with the original paint job and bars on the windows. There doesn't seem to be anyone inside, or else everyone's asleep.

I see this out of the corner of my eye while I walk past it.

Along the side of the road is the burned out husk of a car. Pretty much the only parts left of it are the skeleton frame and sheet metal. Without pausing to think, I crouch down, crawl beneath the massive automobile corpse, and check my range of vision. I can see the house clearly: lights off, street quiet. There's crunched up glass pressing against my forearms; good thing I wore my jacket.

_It better not be long, _I think.

Fifteen minutes pass. I nearly fall asleep.

But when midnight rolls around, my heartbeat is so loud I'm certain that it's waking the dead.

A car pulls into the driveway. A man steps out of it.

A big man.

A big, black, heavily muscled, scar-covered, drunk man.

He doesn't see me as he stumbles up the porch steps and struggles with the doorknob before going in—the place isn't even locked. He slams the door loudly. "You up?" I hear him slur. "Gitcher ass out here now!"

The windows explode with yellow light from the kitchen.

My heartbeat begins to suffocate me. It keeps rising until I can taste it. I can almost feel blood on my tongue. I tremble, pull myself together, say I'm acting like a little girl, and then keep right on trembling. This scene is terrifying me. I'm covered by a _car_, but when the moonlight pours out of a cloud and right onto my hiding spot, I feel naked. Like the world can see me. The street is numbly silent except for the giant man who's stumbled home and yells at whoever else is inside the house.

Light materializes from the bedroom now.

Through the bars, I can see the whole thing.

A woman is sitting on top of her bed. She's wearing a nightie, and she has both knees pulled up to her chest as she hugs them, rocking back and forth, head hanging low. The hands of the man wrap into her hair and yank her down on top of the mattress, hard.

"Thought you was waitin' up," he says. He jumps onto the mattress and holds her down with one arm. With the other hand he undoes his belt and pants.

He's on her.

He puts himself in.

He has sex with her. She cries out in pain. She shrieks and wails and only I can hear it. Ohmigod.

It's deafening.

_Why doesn't anyone else hear this?_

Within a few moments I know the answer.

_Because the world doesn't care._

I know I'm right. And I know that this is why I've gotten this card.

I have to do something. I've been chosen to do something about this.

_But what?_

And then a little boy appears on the porch.

He cries.

I watch.

There's only the lights now. No more crying. No more screams. Just the squeaking of mattress springs, and the sobs of a mother and her son. It goes on and on forever, and the boy sits there in front of me and the world, and he cries and cries.

He's abut eight.

When it finally ends—when the bed stops making noise—the boy gets up and goes inside. Like he's following a pattern. _This can't be happening every night_, I tell myself. But I'm sure it does.

Then the mother takes the boy's spot on the porch.

She also sits down, like her son. She's got brown skin and black hair. Her nightgown is on, but it's stained and torn in several places around the hemline. She has both hands in her face. At one point she holds both hands out, still palm up, looking at the tears she'd cried as they soak her palms. It's like she's holding her heart in both hands. Her tears are like blood trailing down her arm.

I almost walk over to her, but instinct stops me.

_You know what needs to be done to fix this._

Yeah, I can comfort her. I can comfort anyone until the cows come home. But that's not what needs to be done. A shoulder to cry on won't stop this from happening tomorrow night and the night after.

It's the man I have to walk up to.

It's him that I have to confront.

And that doesn't change the fact that she's still crying on the front porch, and I wish I could go over there and hold her. I don't think I'll be able to cry with her—I haven't cried since I was in middle school. I wish I could rescue her and hold her in my arms.

_How do people live like this?_

_How do they survive?_

And maybe that's why I got the card.

What if they can't anymore?


	5. Chapter 5

**5**

**"By perseverance the snail reached the ark."**

**Charles H. Spurgeon**

I don't do anything.

The guy is built like a brick firehouse. He'll kill me if I get in his face.

So I don't tell anyone. Not my friends. Not the authorities. I've never trusted the police in the first place. Something beyond all that needs to be done. And for the love of all that is kosher, _I'm_ the one that's been chosen to do something about it.

Megan asks me about it the next day when we're grabbing lunch over at the 7-Eleven, but I tell her she doesn't want to know. She gives me that concerned look I love so much and says, "Just be careful, Wally, okay?"

I agree with her. And just like that, we're back to our everyday lives.

Pfft. Yeah, right.

All day long I can't help but think about it. How can I just do nothing?

What can I do in the first place?

For the next seven days, I even go back there every night, without fail, and shake with the fear and share the pain of the mother and her son. Sometimes nothing happens—sometimes there's no violence when he comes over. On those nights, the silence of the street is deafening. There's nothing like hiding in a void of quiet, waiting for an explosion of pain and screaming. Knowing that you're a bigger bastard than the guy who rapes this woman. Knowing that you're weak.

A coward.

Your only comfort being the hope of, _You never know, Wally. Things just might work themselves out._

I know that's pathetic in the worst possible way, but there simply is no way that I can deal with something so beyond my abilities. I don't have any experience with this! I can't just walk into a house and start having a fistfight with Mike Tyson—I'll need a few wins under my belt before that can happen. And I've never even gotten into a schoolyard scuffle.

This transcends a school fight the way a dragon transcends a duck.

So I go to school. I still suck at math. Everyone notices that I'm a little quieter these days, but that's just because I don't have the energy to goof off anymore. I'm exhausted from lack of sleep. How can you sleep when you have this kind of monster in the back of your brain, chewing through your skull?

_Thursday, March 10, 8:05 p.m._

Robin picks up a card and reads from it."Okay. Connor. Name television's famous dolphin from the early 90's show."

Connor scratches his chin and leans back in his chair. "Americans and TV," he mutters. "I honestly don't know. Wasn't there something about a whale name Willy?"

Robin makes a buzzer sound. "Wrong! The correct answer is, _Flipper_. You lose. Next up is Megan—"

Kal holds up a hand. "Hold on a second. You phrased the question wrong."

"What?" Robin looks back at the card. "No I didn't. It's all right there, see?"

"I've seen a few episodes of the show _Flipper_," Kal says. "And Flipper was a porpoise, not a dolphin."

"Oh, _come on_, Kal. It's the same difference."

"No, there's a _major_ difference. Connor should get another question."

Connor smiles and shrugs. "Hey, when the guy's right, he's right."

"He's not right!" Robin's not really mad, but he's a stickler when it comes to fair play. "Look, the rules of the game are to answer the questions correctly according to the answers provided on the bottom of the card! I read it, Connor missed it, and now it's Megan's—"

"Flipper is _not_ a dolphin." Kal's standing up now, and he's serious. He doesn't really care about the game. I've got a feeling that he's just way too passionate about all things ocean.

"There's no difference between the two!"

"Long, cylindrical snout, not short and convex! Nine _hundred_ pounds of muscle, instead of seven! You bet your _ass_ there's a difference—!"

Megan held up a hand, and the room fell silent. "It seems to me," she said quietly, "That we should put it to a vote. Connor and Kal vote for a re-do. Robin votes for no second chances. Wally?" she asks, looking me straight in the face with those lovely green eyes.

I know that I'm in nervous love with her. Nervous because I don't know what to do at all. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to act. What can I tell her when I feel the hunger rise up in me? How would she react? I think she's frustrated with me because I could have been making something of my life instead of just sitting at home and playing Trivial Pursuit. I tutor rich kids in Chemistry, for crying out loud. But I'm still hopeless, useless, and my life is pointless. I can see that she never really sees herself _with_ me, yet she's sleeping with other guys who are worse losers than me. Sometimes I can't bring myself to think about it too much.

Maybe it's because I don't just want sex from her.

I'd want to feel myself mold with her, just for a moment, if that's all I'm allowed.

She's still looking at me.

_Want me_, I beg, _wink at me, smile at me, touch my hand, slide your foot under this table and touch mine, something, anything._

She asks, "What do you think?"

I'm barely paying any attention, so I just say, "I'm with Robin." I think that makes it even.

Megan nods, knowing that it's up to her. "Then I say that Connor should get another question."

Robin throws his hands up in the air, and Connor claps, and I really just don't care about Trivial Pursuit. My head's just not in the game tonight.

"So what happened to that card thing?" Connor asks.

"What?"

"You know what," he says, giving me a _don't try to be slick, you're not that fast_ kind of look. "That king you found in your locker."

"I threw it out." Everyone is looking at me while I lie.

"Good idea," Robin approves. "That was a weird joke."

"Could've gotten you in trouble," Kal nods.

Megan looks at me, amused. "So that card's not the reason why you seem so distracted tonight, Wally?"

"Right."

And that's the truth, to be honest. The King of Clubs has nothing to do with why my mind isn't in the game.

It's the King of Diamonds. The one that I found waiting for me on my pillow this morning.

And the address written on it is right across the street from my apartment.

_11:12 p.m._

I have to tell you, I was actually a bit relieved. Nothing really sucks away your money like having to spend it on a cab every night.

_375 SW 48 Ct._

The address belongs to a small house, owned by a very old man with white hair, and no curtains on his windows. The mailbox out front has a couple of old letters on it that spell out WILSON. It's a mailbox from a time when people still put their names on things without worrying about identity theft. He was in there on his own, making his own dinner and sitting in front of the TV and eating, and drinking a beer. I think he ate some soup and a sandwich.

And loneliness. He ate that too.

I think I felt a connection with him right away.

I watch him from my side of the street, sitting on a bus bench. A lot of times, I hope that the old man was all right. He looks…beyond his time. Like God had taken a soldier from World War Two and allowed him to live to this age, even though he never expected to make it home from Normandy, and now he wonders how his strength and power and life could have slipped down the pipes and landed him into a three-room house with no curtains and no guests. He looks strong and tired at the same time. He spoke to his television and stove and his food.

It kind of depresses me to think that a human being could be so lonely that he would comfort himself with the company of household appliances. Not that I'm much better, mind you. Let's face facts: my only romantic relationship is with a porn stash.

But still. There's something about this old man that makes me feel different. Like I can actually do something here. It's like the King of Clubs told his buddy Diamonds that I couldn't fight Tyson without a few victories in other fights, and Diamonds responds with exactly what I needed.

So I decide to do something, now.

I put on my Nikes. Lace them up tight.

For a second I'm hit with the wisdom of the logo and the Nike slogan, and I wonder if the secret to all these cards is just to do them and get them over with.

Then I go out the door, and cross the street. The front steps are made from cracked cement. The screen door in front of the mahogany one is torn and frayed at the edges. I open the screen door and knock on the wood in time with my heartbeat.

His footsteps climb to the door. His feet sound like the ticking of a bomb. Counting down to the moment he opens the door.

The door is opened.

He looks at me, _up_ at me, and for a moment we both get lost in each other. His face is a mask of curiosity, wondering who I am and what I'm doing here, but only for a moment. Then, with stunning realization that shoots across his face like a meteor shower lighting up the sky, his face shatters into a smile and his eyes shine bright with a waterfall of tears.

"_Joey_…"

He steps towards me and hugs me, hard, his wrinkled arms encasing me. _"_I knew you'd come back. I knew it."

For a very long time, we stand there, his arms wrapped around me and mine around him. He shakes. His tears are joy. When we move apart, he looks up at me again, till the tears come back out of his eyes and follow the ones before it.

"Oh," he says, and shakes his head, laughing softly. "Look at me. Thanks, Joey. I knew it, I _knew_ it, I knew you'd come back someday." His hand clasps down onto my shoulder, and he leads me into the house. "Come in," he says.

I just do it.


	6. Chapter 6

**5**

**"The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved."**

**Mother Teresa.**

"Can you stay for dinner, Joey?"

"Only if you'll have me," I reply. It seems like the best answer, considering the circumstances of me having no idea who the hell I'm supposed to be. It's like waking up with amnesia, two bullet wounds, and a microchip in your hip with a bank account number on it. (Which reminds me, is today a Thursday?)

Old man Wilson chuckles. "Only if you'll have me…" He waves that aside. "You're such a joker, Joey."

_Damn straight._

"Of course I'll have you," he continues. "It'll be good to catch up, wont it?"

"Of course. What have you been up to?"

"Eh, this and that." He turns and heads into the kitchen, and I ask if he needs any help. He tells me I should just relax and make myself comfortable, popping his head out with a frosted can in each hand. "Beer?"

"Uh…yeah. It's Miller time, isn't it?"

He tosses me one, and I catch it. The dining room has two chairs around the table, and I take a seat there next to a pile of opened mail. There's a pension check stub, and I see that his name is Wade Wilson. He's retired military, age eighty-two. When he comes back out, he's got a twin set of TV dinners fresh from the microwave.

We eat, and he tells me all about his day-to-day travels.

He talks for a few minutes everyday to Dave down at the butcher shop, but doesn't buy any meat. Just chats and laughs at his Marine jokes, which really aren't all that funny. Lunch at noon, always. Heads down to the park watches the kids play and the skateboarders do their tricks down at the ramp area. Chess game with Wintergreen over at McGinty's pub after that. _Wheel of Fortune _and _Jeapardy _at five thirty, dinner at six. Then the History and Military channels until nine, when he decides it's time to go to bed.

"So," he says, "that's my life these days. Whaddya think?"

"Well, to be honest…" I pause for a second, thinking about how best to answer this kind old man who once risked his life in the military just so I could sleep peacefully at night. "It sounds really boring."

He tilts his head back and laughs. "Yeah. Yeah, it really does. And it is, mostly. But hey, I'm retired, you know?"

"Yeah." I tilt my head back and drain the last of the beer. It's bitter. I'm not really used to it yet, but gimme time and I'll be throwing them back at college, don't worry. "Hey, you should check out that Bruce Willis movie that just came out on DVD. Ever hear of _RED?_"

He shakes his head, gesturing at the walls. "Don't got anything to play DVD's, here."

"Too bad. That's a good movie. Bruce Willis is a retired super-soldier spy guy, and his classification is RED, which is just an acronym for Retired: Extremely Dangerous…"

I go on for a while.

I'm a movie geek. Shut up.

Later on, he gives me a question. We've cleaned up the table, and I'm finishing my third can and really feeling the effects. God, I'm such a lightweight. Old man Wilson comes back to the table after hitting the john, and nervously sits in his chair. There's uncertainty and fear written all over his face, and I pause when his shaking hands reach out.

They touch my face.

He holds my face motionless, and the fingertips of one hand touch my throat and go over my adam's apple, and his pleading eyes doesn't look away from me.

He says, "Tell me, Joey." The hands begin to shake harder, and his body follows suite. "Where have you been all this time?" His voice is painful but soft. "Are you with your mother?"

Something's stuck in my throat. It feels like fear.

But no.

It's just the words I need to say.

"I'm with her," I say, speaking the sentence as if it's the most truthful thing to ever pass out from my lips. "I'm with her, and I've been trying to come visit for such a long time."

He returns my conviction, nodding. "I thought so." He pulls my forehead over to his, leans over, and kisses my hair. "It's so good to hear your voice again, Joey. You always had a way with words."

"Yeah," I say. "I guess I did."

Soon, he tells me he has to go to bed. I'm pretty sure he's close to exhaustion—it's eleven o'clock—and I nod.

"Will I see you again?" he asks. "I know you've got to be going. The big guy doesn't like to keep you boys away from your new place, I take it."

"I'll come back," I say as we walk to the door. "Definitely."

He hugs me, and I give him one back. Then I'm out the door, and for some reason I can't explain—since this has got to be the weirdest night in a string of progressively weird nights—I start to laugh as I cross the street.

So the task was just to soothe an old man's loneliness?

The feeling of it gathers in me as I walk home. When I see Megan coming back from a night out, her hair a mess and her makeup smeared, I wrap my arms around her and give her a tight hug. It's very tempting to pick her up and twirl her—I feel like I could carry the world on my back, no problem.

"Wally, what's gotten into you?"

I put her down with a laugh, and Megan's laughing, looking at me with bemusement.

"How about some coffee?" I ask.

"Oh my…are you _drunk_, Wally?"

I head over to our poor man's kitchen, which thankfully has a coffee pot. "Yep."

She knows that Kal's the only one of us with direct access to beer, but Kal's not the kind to drink in the first place and would never break the law to get any of us buzzed. "Who got you drunk?"

"I think", I say while pouring plenty of sugar into a mug, "I have no idea."

Megan keeps up her weird, bemused look.

I like being Joey.

_Monday, March 14, 8:23 p.m._

"Remember when you used to read to me, Joey?"

"Oh yeah," I reply.

Needless to say, I'm back across the road.

He reaches a hand out and points to the bookshelf. "Could you pick up a book and read a few pages? I miss the sound of your voice."

"Which book?" I ask when I notice just how many there are. Old man Wilson is one heck of a reader.

"Your favorite," he answers. "The one you used to read all the time."

_Damn…_ I search the spines of the books, trying to find some kind of clue. _Which one?_

But it doesn't matter.

I may not know Joey's favorite book, but I can sure pick mine. And it's here.

"_Starship Troopers?"_ I suggest.

"I never threw it away," he nodded. "I remember that was the first book you ever read."

"And I repeated it over and over," I say, and begin to read. "_I always get the shakes before a drop…"_

He falls asleep on the couch after a few pages, and I wake him and help him to bed.

"Good night, Joey."

"Good night."

I head home, and immediately go online and do a search for _Joey Wilson_. Nothing turns up, until I revise the search and change it to _Joseph_ _Wilson_. This turns something up.

It's not good.

Joseph Wilson is dead.

I check, re-check, and do it all over again, but sure enough, it's there. And the story is unbelievable.

Joey Wilson was the son to Slade and Adeline Wilson—both members of the U.S. Army—and he died during a hostage situation. His throat had been slashed. Joey's mom had been driven insane by the news that her son had been killed, and had lashed out at the first person nearest to her: Joey's dad. She'd managed to leave him blind in one eye.

I couldn't find anything else beyond that.

All that was left was the name of a cemetery.

_Joseph Wilson_

_1980-1988_

_Beloved Son _

It's a simple epitaph. I like it. All those tombstones with poetry and angelic designs seem like too much, to me. It's a gravesite, not a birdbath.

Sorry. I don't like cemeteries.

It's the next day, and I'm visiting Joey right after class. It's half an hour before I've gotta go teach Connor a thing or two about chemistry, but right now I feel no need to rush. For a good ten minutes I stand there with both hands in my pockets, burning in the sunlight. The whole time, I'm trying to guess what it must be like to have your throat cut out, and, more to the point, realizing that old man Wilson hasn't seen his son for over twenty years.

I can tell.

No other boy has been in his life. Not like his Joey.

He's been waiting more than two decades, wondering if his son was in heaven.

Well.

Now he is.


	7. Chapter 7

**7**

"**Like a well-trained athlete, I prepare thoroughly, and then when the time is right, I'm ready to spring from the gate. Ironically, learning to be spontaneous takes preparation and practice."**

**Donald Trump**

_Tuesday, March 15, 7:25 a.m._

I wake up, brush my teeth, take a shower, all that. Getting ready for school is the time of day when I resemble a three toed sloth. I feel unbelievably tired, sluggish, and I can fully understand why zombies move so slow because I feel what it's like to be half-dead.

I pick up my books, and a card slips out from between the pages of Algebra 2.

My tiredness is gone. Right out the window.

"You gotta be _kidding me_…"

It's another King. This time his suit is spades. Scribbled on the back of the card is another address, and a time: _8332 Butcher Street. Six a.m._

It's not the fact that I have to do one more assignment. It's the fact that I have to be somewhere at _six in the morning_. Cripes, whoever is doing this to me, they've gotta be an early riser. I like to it the sack around one.

All day long the card sticks in my head. I use the computers in the school library during lunch to check on the address, and it belongs to a house. Another house. A nice one, this time. I know I've got to do it, obviously, or lose my mind. Slade Wilson's story is beautiful and touching, and I love hanging out with the crazy old guy and drinking his beer, but I know I have to move on.

For a moment I consider putting this card aside and going back to the first one…but I'm still too frightened by what I've seen and heard there. I need one more win.

So I go through with it. I decide not to wait, and instead dive right in.

_Wednesday, March 16, 5:58 a.m._

I arrive with the sun on Butcher Street. Overall, this winter's been pretty warm, and spring is just around the corner, but right now in the twilight dawn I _really_ wish I was snuggled up in my warm bed. Or, y'know, _anywhere_ else that had a bed. I hate mornings. Mornings are for people who work hard, not smart.

The address is to a two-story house on the top of a hill. Just before six o'clock hits, a lone figure comes out from around the side of the house. Red athletic running pants, a hooded gray sweatshirt, white running shoes…I think it's a guy, but I can't see his face from here because of the hood and bad my bad angle.

Well. That, and I can't help but notice the rifle carrying case that he's got slung on his back.

I sit on a street bench, a newspaper in both hands, and watch this hooded person start to go jogging. A morning run. With what appears to be a high-powered firearm.

He comes running down the driveway, head down, and I can see the trailing wires of iPod earphones coming out from the hood and into a side pocket. This could be someone heading off to become the next Washington Sniper, but hey, at least he's got tunes.

Turning towards me, the runner hits the street at a measured pace, looks up to check for oncoming traffic while using one hand to sweep the hood back—and sees me, just as I'm getting ready to stand up and find a better place to hide.

For a moment, we lock eyes, and both of us stop for a pause. I'm stunned.

It's a girl.

She looks at me, and she has sunshine-colored hair in a ponytail, and clear eyes. Blue, and flashing, like sapphires, and almond-shaped. Like she has a trace of Asian in her blood. Soft lips that form a gentle shape of surprise. Her arms are skinny, but she's got the lean muscular curves of an athlete. She's one of those girls with an obnoxiously perfect metabolism, a small but perky chest, long legs, and tiny feet that hit the ground lightly.

She's beautiful.

She's absolutely stunning, and I'm pissed.

I don't like stunning girls. Hear me out, okay? I'll let you know in a moment why, but first you should know that I have a very strong, instinctive dislike of girls who look like they're meant to be on the latest new teen drama series on TV. These instincts have saved me a _lot_ of grief—unlike the rest of my buds, who've made total fools of themselves chasing after the hot girls in class.

The reason I'm angry is because my instincts are going right out the window, because I'm being crushed from the inside of my skull. Feelings of love and lust fight each other like dogs inside of my chest, and I realize that I'm absolutely drawn to this girl who runs with a gunbag over her shoulders every morning. I can't escape it.

Girls complain about how their body chemistry makes their lives a living hell some days. Well, ladies, hate to break it to ya, but you're _far_ from unique. My raging hormones and male instincts are forcing me to get rid of my very own self-guiding principles, and what's worse, _I know it_.

She runs past, and I'm angry. I don't want to be angry. Holy crap, the girl's got a weapon, focus on that, huh?

That's got to be why I'm here. That's got to be the reason this card was given to me. She's about to hurt someone, and I've got to stop her. Sure, it's not a rapist ex-con who could make Tyson his bitch, but pretty girls with high-powered rifles can only make two things: extremely entertaining sex scenes for James Bond, and gut-wrenchingly terrifying chase scenes for Wally West.

She rounds the corner, and heads for my school.

I pick my ass up and hustle.

Well. More like _struggle_.

When I run, it's usually in a sprint. I've got youth, y'know? I'm fast. But once I've gone a hundred yards or something, I realize what it is that I really am: a lazy highschool student who doesn't exercise enough. My legs labor to lift up and drag me forward. My feet feel like they're wearing concrete shoes.

_Christ, Wally, you're one unfit bastard, aren't you?_

She eventually gets so far ahead of me that I lose her for a moment. I don't know how I do it, but my hunch is right, and I guess that she's heading for the football field. When I get there, she's in the middle of the field and she's stretching, the gun bag lying in the grass. She stretches her left leg, then the right leg. Those long and lovely legs.

_Don't think about it. Don't think about it._

Halfway through those thoughts, she notices me.

Oh. Crap.

I'm still heaving, but I have a motto: when you get caught, pretend you're _supposed_ to be doing whatever it is that you're doing. So I walk onto the field, head over to the bleachers—empty as the Roman coliseum and just as creepy—and I sit down to stare openly at her.

Not that I'm ogling. Just to let her know that she can't set up a sniper rifle without me noticing. Not ogling at all.

She knows it's her move. She turns back to the case, still glancing over her shoulder as if to say _I've got my eye on you too, buddy_, and kneels to zip it open. I was right. There's definitely a weapon in there.

But here's a surprise: It's a longbow.

She pulls out a black sleeve that covers only one single arrow. She attaches the string to the bow, knocks an arrow, and faces the endzone. It's only now that I see a small, gleaming soda can sitting on the field goal post, like a formerly caffeinated bird. She raises the bow, pulls the feathers of the arrow back to her cheek, and doesn't even take time to aim before letting fly.

Let me tell you something: this girl got game.

When fired from a longbow, arrows are _slow. _Forget what you've seen on TV. Legolas shoots so fast that you can barely see the shafts entering orcs. But the arrow that I saw that morning? Hell, I could've outrun it, probably.

But regardless of speed, the can balanced on top of the goal post made a solid _PING!_ when that arrow hit it. From the _length of a football field._

And the girl ran over to the endzone, picked up the arrow, tossed the can in a nearby recycling bin, ran back over to her gear, knocked the arrow, and pointed it straight at my heart.

At least, I hope that was where she was aiming. I want to have children someday.

"Why are you following me?" she asks.

I don't say a word. It's kind of like when a deer steps out in front of a car at night. If I said the wrong thing, getting hit with the arrow might be just as deadly as a ton and a half of steel.

"You're Wally West," she says. "And my arm won't hold this arrow back forever. Why did you follow me this morning, Wally?"

_Ohmigod, the trigger happy crazy girl with the bow knows who I am_.

I have to say something. So I start with the basics. "Hello?" God, that sounded dumb. The stupidity of my voice feels beyond salvation. So I try something else. "How do you know who I am?"

"You were on the news a few days ago," she says. Her arms aren't even trembling from the strain of holding the bow taut, but mistakes _do_ happen. She repeats for the third time, and I think this is where it's final, "Why did you follow me?"

I sit there, legs tired and heart pounding, and say, "I'm not sure yet."

"You were sitting at the bus stop this morning. Don't give me crap about you waiting for the bus. Nobody sits for the bus at that stop."

"I saw you come running with that rifle bag," I say. "I didn't know what you were going to do with it."

Her eyes narrow. "So you're not a pervert or something, are you?"

"No! Come on!" I'm thinking, _don't look at her boobs, don't look at her boobs…_

She gives me a few more seconds of silence, then slowly lowers the bow. "Well, that's a relief. My dad would kill the both of us if I shot you and you lived." Her voice isn't anything like an actual teenage girl—she sounds like she was bred from royalty or something. Just in the way that she pronounces the words…where does she come from?

"I'm sorry if I scared you," I say.

She gives a bark of a laugh, and de-strings her bow and begins putting it back into the case. "Scare me. That's a nice one." She puts everything away in record time and shifts it onto her shoulder, smiling with cockiness and superiority. "I don't mind if you're out here in the morning, watching me. But just don't get any ideas, okay? There are levels of discomfort that I'll allow you to give me, but don't cross any lines."

I nod, and I feel myself returning to myself. The old Wally instincts return—_See? She's blowing you off, just like any other hot chick. She thinks she's above you. You've gotten to see what she's really like, so don't fall for the hotness trap._

I nod and stand up, stiffly. "I got it."

"Thanks." She heads for the street.

"Can I ask you something, though?"

"Obviously," she stops, a smile beginning on her lips as she looks over one shoulder, "you just did. But you can ask one more."

_Why thank you, thou holy queen beeyotch._ "What was the deal with the whole arrow thing?"

"That? That's my morning workout-slash-training session."

I don't say anything. I let the silence say the question for me.

She rolls her eyes. "I'm part of an archery club, and there's a competition at the end of this month. Every shot counts. So every morning I wake up early, run a mile to this field, put a can on top of the goal post, and shoot it when my body's buzzed on adrenaline and my heart's pounding. I make it as tough as possible so that when the competition comes around, the actual shot that counts is easy in comparison to the training."

Again, I stay silent.

She tips an imaginary hat to me, and heads for the road. "Later, skater."

Did she really just say that? Later, skater?

Who the hell says _that_?


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note**

**Sigh.**

**Okay.**

**Hello, everyone, and thank you for reading. Sorry that it's been so long since an update. Life happened.**

**You know: finding a new job, repairing my home, studies, getting shot by a mugger-huhuh wha...?**

**Yep, that's not a typo. A few weeks ago I almost went the way of Thomas and Martha Wayne by getting shot by an actual mugger. And let me tell you something: it does more than just "change your life." It sets everything into perspective right damn quick.**

**Note to tourists: downtown Miami is not a place you want to visit.**

**I was leaving my workplace at a government building (lets not get into specifics as to which government) and, while squeezing between two buildings-an actual alley, folks, I kid you not-a guy stepped in front of my path, pulled a gun, and informed me that i was about to have a really bad day (or something like that; the details are a little fuzzy to me at this point).**

**The bad part about this is, I've been trained for moments like this. Like, five years of training. In military martial arts and combatives. And though I know how to disarm a guy with a shotgun, or knife, or grenade, or bayonet, one of the things I was taught was that you do not risk your life, your health, and your future by trying to protect a wallet filled with forteen dollars and a credit card. So I handed it over to the guy.**

**And he pulled the trigger.**

**Now, I've got no idea what made him shoot. Nerves, drugs, mental instability, it could be anything. I remember that he looked desperate and dirty, like a homeless guy, his voice was soft and quiet, and his eyes were big and bloodshot. But what I do know is that as soon as I handed over my wallet, he pulled the trigger.**

**The bullet grazed my left hand-the one holding out my wallet-and then went into my left bicep/tricep area, tore up the muscles, missed the bone, and snapped my panic mode all the way up to eleven. I wish I could say I grabbed his gun with my other hand, like I've been taught. I didn't. I grabbed hold of my arm, screamed, and knew that I was about to die.**

**You have NO IDEA how scary a gunshot wound is until it's actually happening to you.**

**You _know_, you are absolutely certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you will be dead because of this. You are deceased. The bullet has taken your life, and it's just gonna take a little bit of time for your body and brain to realize that your soul has departed this mortal coil.**

**Obviously, thankfully, I was wrong.**

**The cops showed up, and the ambulance took me to a hospital that was about a bajillion miles away (another note: Miami hospitals are worse than their government buildings). But when they say morphine takes away the pain, they ain't kidding. That stuff is awesome beyond words. In the emergency room they shot me up with _more_ painkillers, then poured several bottles of hydrogen peroxide into both wounds before diggin into them with syringes and needles, trying to clean out all the residual specks of unburnt gunpowder that could cause infection. The back of my hand is covered with a fine gunpowder dust, like pepper sprinkled across white paper. The doctors say that'll all fall out when I grow new skin layers.**

**So now I've got a few months of therapy to go through, a cool set of scars that look like the toppings on a pizza (just to gross all you pizza fans out there) and it takes forever to type. Especially when you're on painkillers. I might become the next Gregory House, what with all the pills I've gotta take.**

**But anyway, I've got a lot of problems to take care of, and I'm gonna get them handled before I start submitting new chapters. There's plenty more to tell in this story, so stay vigilant. Things are about to get Darker And Edgier, so I'm gonna switch the rating to M when the time comes. Be ready when it does. Thanks for the reviews!**

**And stay out of dark alleyways.**


	9. Chapter 9

**Okay, folks, listen up. I'm still healing up. I'm on some serious pain meds.**

**And when I'm off those pain meds, I am pissed as all hell. Doing nothing sucks. So I'm gonna write, and I'm gonna vent out this emotional turmoil, and I'm gonna type and I don't care what the doctors say (even though they say it's a good idea, actually, kind of like additional therapy). So we're gonna get back to this story, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna allow slow typage to stop me.**

**So let's go.**

**I'm changing this rating to M (you'll see why soon enough—my world has become a bit of a darker, scarier place) so if you're sensitive, might as well stop reading now.**

* * *

**8**

**Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.**

**Antoine De Saint-Exupery**

I go out to the football field every morning and she's there, every day, without fail. One morning the rain is pouring down and she's _still_ there, making that one single, perfect shot. It's the kind of thing that makes you wonder, _if she actually comes in second place, what kind of training is the first place winner doing?_

Once, when school lets out and I make my way towards the buses, I see her. She's walking with a group of friends, which somehow gladdens me because I don't like seeing people alone, yet it also ticks me off a little because pretty people _always_ have friends. It's funny how humans can be this messed up with jealousy and envy.

The strange thing I notice is that, when a tall, fit redheaded guy comes along and talks to the girls and walks with them, she doesn't say a word. In fact, she doesn't even look at him. She looks at the floor instead. When the tall guy leaves, she's all right again.

I shake my head and laugh.

At myself.

She's a girl. She probably feels too skinny, not realizing how beautiful she is. I think, if that's all her problem is, she'll be fine.

_Listen to you,_ my mind bites back. _She'll be FINE? How the hell would you know? Is it because YOU'VE turned out fine, Wally? I'd very much doubt it._ _You've got no business predicting this girl's future._

But I've got to do _something_ for her. Why else would I have gotten the king of spades?

A few times, I watch her house at night.

Nothing happens.

Ever.

_March 30, Saturday, 12:45 p.m._

I go to the archery contest that's held. Amazingly the targets are set up on the football field. No cans on the field goal posts—these are the straight up, honest-to-Robin Hood-style bullseye targets that are each about the size of a Picasso canvas. There are twelve. One for each student.

She's there with her family.

Her mother is in a wheelchair, a tiny Oriental woman. She sits with a stillness, a regality, that makes me think of Cleopatra on a throne. She wheels herself over the grass like it's made of marble, no assistance coming from Dad.

Dad is someone I recognize. His photo is in our school gymnasium—The Sportsmaster, Lawrence "Crusher" Crock, the only guy to have graduated from the school while having been a star member on _every_ sports team. (Our school's pretty old, but the alumni are revered).

And then there's the daughter.

I'm momentarily struck by two discoveries. First, I don't even know this girl's name yet, even though I've been tailing her for weeks. And second, she's carrying a different bow.

When she steps up to the firing line, the longbow of wood is gone. In its place is a compound bow, laden down with so many gears and levers and sights and balancing weights and doodads and whatnots that it looks like it should be firing missiles instead of arrows. Every other archer in the place has a bow like hers—some of them even have laser sights.

Christ.

An announcer's voice rings out, "First archer, Roy Harper, take your place."

There's a smattering of polite applause, and the tall redheaded guy from the other day steps up and takes aim. His arm is as steady as a rock. When he lets fly, the arrow shoots forward so fast that I can't even see it until it's sticking out of the bullseye, dead center.

The audience _oohs_ and _ahhs_. Except for The Sportsmaster.

"Next archer: Artemis Crock. Take your place."

Artemis.

Who the hell names their kid Artemis?

I don't like it. For the first time in my life, I'm glad that I'm just Wally. Not Walter—that name isn't on my birth certificate. It's just Wally. And I'd love being Just Wally any old day as long as I wasn't given the name of a long dead Greek deity.

There's some more polite applause—except for her father, who's yelling his fool head off so loudly that the people monitoring earthquake activity in the region are probably getting some major shifts on the Richter scale. "Go, honey! Go, honey! Show 'em all, girl! _Beat_ that boy, darlin', you can do it!"

I'd rather come in second than have to endure that kind of a soccer parent.

Artemis sees me once she starts walking, and a small piece of contentment finds itself on her face. She looks happy to see me, like my presence has become so much a part of her training that she can't shoot straight without me ogling, but she still turns immediately and walks up to the firing line.

Her right hand is gloved. Her left forearm is protected by a leather sleeve. Her bow is lifted forward and an arrow placed delicately on its shelf.

The arrow is pulled back.

The technology on her bow holds it still long enough for her to take her time aiming.

There's no rush.

When her arrow shoots forward, I can barely hear the twang of bowstring.

And when I look and see the arrow sticking two centimeters to the left of the bullseye, and know that she's not going to win, I feel regret and sadness. I'm certain that she must be feeling the same way, but her face shows none of it. She squares her shoulders and walks back to her family, not looking at all the people applauding, not even looking at her parents. Mom is clapping and smiling. Dad is silent, arms folded.

The rest of the archers take their shots, while Artemis sits with her folks, drinking a sports drink and staring at her bow. Her mother holds her hand and says nothing. I like her mother. She looks like the kind of person who tells everyone that she loves them right before she goes to sleep, and before she goes to work, or just for whatever.

I don't even look at her dad.

Instead, I stare at the bow. Take a long, close look at it. It's probably worth more than a car, with all that gear on it. And it's not right. Not for her.

Artemis needs a better bow.

_Sunday, March 31, 9:50 a.m._

For the next three Saturdays in a row, there is an archery contest. Apparently there's a league. Who'd have thought, right? And every time Artemis steps up to the firing line with an impossibly easy shot before her, she somehow always places second to Roy Harper.

Eventually, I have enough. She may be a looker, but how can she not see the answer to her problem? It's so obvious, I decide to introduce a little bit of theatrics to drive the point home.

Early in the morning, I go to her house and knock on the door. Her mother answers.

"Can I help you?"

I feel nervous, like I've come to ask for her daughter's hand in courtship. I'm holding a giftwrapped shoebox beneath one arm, and she looks at it. Quickly I lift it and say, "I've got a delivery for Artemis."

The shoe box passes from my hands to hers—God, her hands are so tiny—and the woman looks down at the note that I've attached to it, reading out loud. _"I've got the perfect sight you need to win, right here inside this box."_ She looks back up at me and raises an eyebrow. "There's no return address. Or stamp."

"Tell her it's from Wally. She'll know who it's from."

"Are you a friend of hers from school?"

"Me? No, ma'am." I turn and head for the street. "I'm just the messenger."

I almost make it to the road before she calls out, "Wait!"

I stop and turn. "Yes?"

She holds the box out, puzzled, shaking it and looking at me. Nothing rattles.

"I know," I say, smiling. "Weird, huh?"

The box is empty.

_Saturday, April 9_

She gets the point, and she arrives to the final match with a rifle bag slung over her shoulder.

This, to me, is extremely funny. I mean, you can only take so many cell phone snapshots of the crowd, every one of their jaws hanging open, staring at the girl who brings a gun to an archery contest. I secretly wish that she had a carrying case that looked like a bazooka.

She gets called after Roy Harper again, and walks up to the firing line without a glove or forearm protection. She's wearing running shoes.

"Just don't miss," I whisper.

A few seconds later, she whips the boy up and pulls the string back so fast that there's no way, _no possible way_, that she actually took any effort to aim. The arrow shoots up and away, arcing through the air, a deliberate mockery to every other arrow that's every been shot in this stupid competition—while those arrows were shot, this one was _lobbed_. While other arrows were streaking with the speed of a bullet, this one soars like a bird of prey.

It's the most beautiful shot anyone has ever seen.

It hits the target.

The arrow quivers.

Two centimeters from the bullseye.

Roy Harper wins.

Like always.

Her arms drop, and there's an ache in her shoulders, but her face looks skyward, eyes closed towards the sun, and for the first time, an archer hears not just applause, not just cheers, but shouts of incredulity.

Polite clapping has been replaced with _"Holy crap did you SEE that shot?" _

Her father shouts and makes a ruckus, like always, only this time he's not alone.

I know that my job is done.

I turn and head for the road, and begin to walk away. As usual, I've got a tutoring session to do. And, as usual, I know that I'm not going to get far towards home before someone stops me.

I hear her footsteps on the grass, but I don't turn around. I want to hear her voice.

"Wally?"

It's unmistakable.

I turn around and look at the girl that I've just helped come into second place, something that she did without me just fine. Some discomfort stands between us, and I know I don't belong in her life anymore.

"I just," she says, "wanted to say thanks."

"I didn't do much."

"No." She refuses my lie. "Thanks, Wally."

I sigh and nod. "It's been a pleasure."

I notice that she looks at me, and unlike when she looks at Roy Harper, she can gaze at me without looking down at the ground.

"I've got a confession to make." I say.

She says nothing.

"That first morning that I saw you. When I was sitting at the bus stop."

"Yes?"

"I followed you, " I say, "because you have a _fantastic_ ass."

Her face goes a little red, but her fist shoots out and hits me in the shoulder hard enough that my arm goes numb. "You idiot," she laughs.

"Might as well accept it," I say, rubbing my shoulder. "I'm amazed you don't have guys lined up around the block by now."

"Will I see you around?" she asks, and to be honest, I think it means she actually wants to see me around.

"Not at six o'clock in the damn morning, you aren't."

She laughs again, and I twist on my feet, waving bye. She doesn't let me go. "Wally?"

It's impossible for a guy to leave when a pretty girl calls his name. Damn genetics. "Yeah?"

"Are you, like… an angel, or something?"

Inside, I laugh. _Me? An angel? I'm an average student, a science whiz, a piss poor runner, and sexual misfit._

"No, Artemis, I'm not an angel." I figure these are good words to depart with. "I'm just Wally."

With a last smile, I walk away. I feel her watching me. I don't look back.

It feels good to be Just Wally.

_11:15 p.m._

"I'm home," I say, shuffling in through the door. Tutoring is hell. Christ, I need a nap. I feel a bit worn down, to tell you the truth. Like completing this last card's mission has been winding me tighter than a spring. I knock on the door to Megan's room—she has the master bedroom, lucky girl—and I ask, "Megan? Can I come in?"

It's not until she opens the door that I hear the shower running.

"Wally?"

She's there, poking her head out of the doorway, blocking my path, wearing a too-big-T-shirt like a mini dress for pajamas. She's got beautiful morning hair—tousseled in all the right places, like she's just woken up from a nap of her own. The dark, lovely legs.

Teeth marks on her neck.

God.

I can smell the sex on her.

And the shower is running.

"Oh." I say.

"Umm…?" I can tell that she wants to know what I'm doing home at this time, and I want to scream, ask her what she's doing, only having sex with guys she doesn't even know, and both of our questions are interrupted when Connor calls from inside the shower and asks, "Hey, what's keeping you?"

"Uh." Megan shuffles, staring at her feet.

She's uncomfortable.

I'm a statue.

Connor. Big, strong, handsome Connor. Connor the hero. Connor the man.

She says, offhand, "Nothing, Connor. It's just Wally."

Just Wally.

There's silence from the inside of her bathroom.

"Now's not a good time…" Her eyes plead at me to understand.

I begin walking backward, waiting.

For what?

For her to come out and talk to me.

But she doesn't come.

And I get it.

The time comes for me to leave, and she sees that I'm not all right, and she takes a few steps out of the doorway and asks, "We'll talk later, okay? You'll be home later tonight?"

I turn and head for the door.

"Wally?"

"I don't know." And the truth is, I _don't _know. My hand feels a thousand years old as it wraps around the doorknob and lets me out into the world. My face feels cold. My eyes feel shot with blood.

Just Wally.

I hit the sidewalk.

Just Wally walks on.

Just Wally breaks into a sprint.

He begins to get some serious speed.

And Just Wally trips.

He rips a foot into the sidewalk like a clumsy, stupid, pathetic waste of life, and hits the cement with so much force that Just Wally thinks his hands are broken. But he knows they aren't. It's just the skin from his palmsthat's missing now. Blood feels nice on his fingertips, dripping onto the ground like a trail of breadcrumbs.

"Wally?"

Megan's voice.

"Wally!"

Just Wally turns back to listen to her. Like a good friend should. Like he always does.

"I'm sorry, okay?"

He resigns. Gives up. Stops trying.

"Okay." He admits it to himself. "It's all okay." And he walks off. He leaves behind the girl. He leaves behind his friend. And he, himself, is left in the same place he's always been:

Alone.


	10. Chapter 10

**"Life is like a movie. If you've sat through more than half of it and it's sucked every second so far, it probably isn't gonna get great right at the end and make it all worthwhile. No one should blame you for walking out early."**

**Doug Stanhope**

_Midnight_

I head over to the 7-Eleven, where Kal works. The place is open all night. I need to speak to someone.

He's not in tonight. I have no one to talk to.

The woman from the first card is there, though. The continuous rape victim.

Her face is unmistakable.

Tiredness has worn her down. It's the face that cries, that calls into the night for help with silent, pleading eyes. It's the face of a woman who sobs every night on her front step. A prisoner who can't find the unlocked door to freedom.

For a second, we lock eyes.

She looks away first, down toward the floor. She's in an aisle that sells Post-Its and mini staplers. She crouches down to examine a pack of mechanical pencils, and I see her silently fall to pieces. She crouches there, silently wanting to fall down to the ground entirely, wishing that she could just cry, collapse on the cool tile floor, but she doesn't. She just doesn't allow herself to.

When she stands back up, I'm still there.

She stares back at me and I stare at her, neither of us knowing what to do.

I opt for the dumbest possible question.

"Are you okay?"

She nods. "I'm okay." The liar.

But I take her word for it. Because I'm done with the world. I don't care about the people who need help anymore.

Life sucks. Then you die.

Why prolong it?

_1:30 a.m._

It's a beautiful evening. Not a cloud in the sky.

I stand on the balcony of a hotel room. I am seriously contemplating a jump.

I look down, over the balcony. There's a pool in the courtyard, but it's too far away for me to aim for. A bit of information from a _Trivial Pursuit_ game enters my head: apparently hotels have to be designed now with their pools a certain amount of feet away from the building, due to one-too-many drunken college kids leaping off of balconies and trying to make it into the deep end.

I don't have a chance of hitting the water.

I just have a decision to make.

Ah, this pain. This is what a broken heart feels like.

Huh. Can't make fun of that _Twilight_ chick now. It doesn't seem nearly so dramatic when you've had your own heart crushed.

_For the record, _I remind myself_, you've got school tomorrow. If you're gonna jump, might as well do it now, or get some rest._

I sigh.

There's a mini bar in the hotel room. At least I can get drunk, maybe have alcohol drop me off into slumber. Maybe die of alcohol poisoning.

I turn around and step off of the balcony, into my room for the evening, and I notice that there's a woman in my room. An Asian woman. Different from Artemis' mom. This one's in a black stocking suit. Gloves on her hands. And her hair is tied up in a bun and covered with, of all things, a clear plastic shower cap.

It's not every day that you turn around and see a ninja with a shower cap on, smiling at you like a cat.

"Hello, cutie," she says.

I blink. This has got to be a dream. Many questions run through my mind, but only one of them sticks.

Do you feel the pain of a broken heart in a dream?

My lips move, and I ask, "Who are you?"

In response, she pulls out a taser from behind her back and shoots me with it.

_An unknown amount of time later._

The sound of lesbian porn wakes me up. I recognize the pattern of _ughs_ and _oh Gods_.

I've woken up to the vocal music of _Wild Women, Wild Horses._

Don't look at me that way.

_Move_, I tell myself, but I can't. I feel cemented to the floor…like a fly wrapped up in a spider's webbing. My head is pounding, like a prequel to death. I try to remember what's going on, but my memory is on an acid trip at the moment.

The woman's face, disfigured by my dizziness, appears above me. So I'm lying down. And I'm wrapped up in something, I can tell, because I feel my muscles twitch and move but I can't actually move my arms anywhere. I'm very much a fly caught in a spider's web.

_What the hell is going on with my life?_

"Hi, Wally."

I'm treading water with my thoughts.

"How are you feeling?"

"You…tased me," I moan.

"Only a little," she answers cheerily. "Had to make sure you don't decide to run off."

"What? What've you…what am I tied up with?"

"Saran Wrap," she says, sounding very pleased with herself. "It's one of the few bindings that don't leave any marks or evidence. Wrap a guy up in enough Saran Wrap, and you can just leave him there to starve. I should know. That's how I made sure."

These words jolt a few gallons of adrenaline into my bloodstream. Suddenly my head feels much clearer. "I'm about to get murdered?"

"Murdered? Oh, no, no, no, Wally. That would be messy, and I don't get paid to _murder_ people. I get paid to make people kill themselves. You're about to commit suicide."

"_WHAT!"_

"Quiet." She holds up the taser, presses down on the activation button, and I see electric blue arcs of lightning jump from one terminal to the other. The smell of ozone wafts into my nose. "Or Mama spank."

I bite my lip.

"That's much better." She walks away and opens the hotel room closet. "I have to tell you, I am _such_ a big fan of bad guys in movies. I got this idea from _The Mechanic_, the new one with Jason Statham? Here. Let me show you how it works." She reaches onto the table and spins a laptop around, showing me the porn. It's _my_ laptop. And yep, my porn.

"First, you'll notice the lovely motion picture, here, positioned directly in front of the open closet. The closet is where they'll find your body, hanging by your neck from the hangar bar, your own belt wrapped around your throat."

She rummages around in her bag for a second and pulls out a jar of moisturizer lotion. "This is for your cock and your right hand. You _are_ right handed, correct?"

"Leftie."

"That's what they all say." She puts the jar back in the bag and walks forward to me, sitting cross-legged by my face. "When the cops show up after your body's been discovered, they'll see you naked, in the closet, a belt wrapped around your neck, and porn on the laptop. They'll ask around and the lady at the front desk will remark that she didn't see you carrying in any baggage—a warning sign of suicidal tendencies. They'll start talking to your friends, and poor little Megan will be so distraught that she drove you to kill yourself, especially through such a degrading way. And the cops will simply write it up as a case of accidental suicide."

"Why the hell," I ask, "would anyone commit suicide like that?"

"Oh, they don't do it on _purpose_, silly. It's called autoerotic asphyxiation. A pervert like you should know how lack of oxygen to the brain can stimulate a sensation of euphoria, heightening sensations like orgasm. Unfortunately, hundreds of people die every year because they accidentally cut off the oxygen for _too _long. Which, in the case of Mr. Hundred And One, would be how _you_ depart this mortal coil."

I'm going to be killed. There's only time for one thing.

One quick question.

I need to know who's behind all this.

The person that's made my life this hell.

"Who sent you?"

She looks down at me, and smiles. "Come on, child. You know I can't tell you that. Nothing would give me greater pleasure, but I do what I'm told and then I get paid, that's it."

"You're going to kill me. At least tell me why. Is it because of something I did? Because whatever it is, I can make things right."

She blinks, and for a second pauses. "No." She reaches into her bag and pulls out, of all things, an envelope. "Damn. He said you might say that."

"What? Who?"

"I already told you that I'm not going to tell you. Don't make me remind you a third time." She gestured at the taser and winked. "It's not about what you've _done, _Wally. It's about what you _didn't _do. My employer mentioned you might feel a sudden motivation to set things right, even from the deep, dark, deadly depths of your despair. Do you feel that motivation?"

"To set things right?"

She nodded.

"I don't even know what's _wrong_."

"Idiot." She opened the manila envelope, and out came a folded piece of paper and a playing card. It was the King of Clubs. "You haven't completed your first mission. _That_ is what's wrong."

For a moment, all I can hear is the smut coming out of my computer.

"You want me," I say slowly, "to finish what I started?"

"I, personally, want you to give up all hope and let me kill you. If that happens, I get paid full price."

"And if I don't give up?"

"I only get half."

"What happens to _me_?"

"Well, you get twenty-four more hours to set things right. Otherwise your time is up and the kill order gets sent to ten other lovely gentlemen in a profession just like yours truly." She smiles wide. "And the reward for bringing in your head is quite the nest egg, let me tell you."

"But I still have time to help that woman?"

A sigh. "If you choose to take it, yes."

"Do you know how I'm supposed to help her?"

She smiles again, a quick, mischievous grin, and looks back at her black bag. "My employer told me that all you need to know is in there." She stands up and stretches like a cat, fixing me with a lazy gaze. "I guess this means you've got a sudden burst in motivation."

"Damn straight."

"Language," she scolds, and draws a knife. "There's a lady present."

"Sorry. Ma'am."

"I'd recommend you stay down there while I leave."

"Whatever you say."

She slits my bindings, walks out onto the balcony, and, just like the Cheshire Cat, disappears without a trace.

I sit up and look down at my palms. They're crusted over with dried blood from where I skinned them on the sidewalk. There's an ache in my side where the electricity went into me. I think I might have a concussion.

But, dammit, I'm alive.

I hobble over to the computer and slam the laptop closed. The porn quiets. The silence fills the room like a tsunami flood. I walk slowly over the carpet on bare feet and reach the black bag that my lady of death just left behind. My hand shivers as I reach in and open the bag.

I touch something cold and heavy.

Something made of metal.

My knuckle touches the hammer, my palm wraps around the grip, and my index finger finds the trigger like the gun was custom made for me.

I shudder.

I grip the gun tight. Lift it out of the bag.

Then I stand up, and walk out the door.

It all ends tonight.


	11. Chapter 11

**10**

"**When you get down to it, there's a choice everyone has to make. Do you want to feel good? Or do you want to do good? Because eventually you're gonna find out where those two roads splint, and you can't walk down both."**

**Kraig Million**

The first thing I do is steal a cab.

This, by itself, is not exactly how you make a series of unfortunate events turn into something good. (At least _I _don't think so. You never really can tell with days like this.)

All I know is, I have to kill a man tonight. I have to get close enough to do it, without him being suspicious. And I'll need some kind of a getaway vehicle.

So: cab theft.

The cabbie was not pleased when I flagged him down by pointing the gun at his face. It's a big gun, a heavy .357 Magnum (not that I'd know just by looking at it—the numbers are etched on the side, like a grand title) and it's only got one bullet in the cylinder. One shot.

I don't intend on killing the cabbie, but hey, when a teenager with blood all over his hands and face points a gun at your head, you pay attention.

"Get out," I snarl.

The cabbie is an old man. Hispanic. Fifty-five, sixty? Life hasn't been good to him. He's afraid that I'm going to end it all right here, and so he raises both hands and gets out, keys still in the ignition, engine purring. I get in and slam the door.

There's a fresh, unopened bottle of tequila lying on the passenger side. I hope the guy was off shift, at least.

I drive into the bad part of town and start passing the bars, my window rolled down. It'll be getting light soon. I don't know if the rapist is still out drinking; he usually comes "home" at around midnight, and Cinderella's carriage has long since turned back into a pumpkin. I keep searching. One bar, then another. If I don't find his car out in the parking lots, then that means he's at the house, probably already asleep while the woman and her son cry quietly, secretly, shamefully.

Two seconds before giving up, I spot the car.

He's still up, still out, still drinking, still living.

Oh. How lucky for everyone.

I pull the cab into the parking lot and park next to his car, checking my watch. Christ, the place'll be closing up soon—there's even a shout of "Last call!" from the inside, followed by a crowd of orders being yelled. I don't have any time to waste. There's a pen lying on the floor of the cab. It'll do.

I pick it up and head over to his car. I puncture one tire. Then the other three. The air punches out of each Goodyear a lot louder than in the movies, but nobody comes out to inspect. I chuck the pen across the parking lot and jump back into the cab, reverse, and park across the street, waiting for him to come out, my arms shaking and my skin coated in a sheen of sweat.

I don't wait long.

He falls out of the bar with about six or seven other guys, and they yell and holler to each other in what I think are supposed to be farewells. _Make yours a good one, you bastard_, I think. _Make it nice and memorable. It's the last one they're ever gonna hear._

He stumbles over to his car, and sure enough, even though he's got enough booze in him to drop an elephant, he notices that something's up with his tires. And he spends a good long minute staring at them, trying to figure it out. He doesn't seem like the type to use work out his grey matter very much, so he could be there for a while, and I've got way too much adrenaline looking for an outlet. I start up the cab and cross the road.

I pull up beside him and honk twice. "Hey man," I say through the open window. "Looks like you got a problem there, huh?"

He blinks at me, nods, and says, "Fuck."

Master of poetry, this one. "Lemme give ya a lift, hey?"

"Fuck off, kid, I ain't payin'."

"Forget it," I say, "I'm off shift anyway. And I'm looking for some good karma." I regret those words as soon as I say them; invoking karma on the night that I become a murderer? Not so smart, Wally. I go for the financial jugular and say the two words no cheapskate can resist: "No charge."

He gets in the back. Says the address.

"Got it," I say. I already know the place anyway. He stretches out in the back, like he's gonna sleep the whole way, but I can't have that yet. I open the bottle of tequila, pretend to take a swig, and pass it back to him. "Up for a shot?"

He snatches it from my hand.

_I knew it. Asshole only knows how to take and take._

"Keep it," I say. "Got plenty back home. This one's yours."

He keeps chugging at it, and I drive slowly. Pretty soon he's snoring in the back seat, way too plastered to wake up now.

I drive past his house.

I drive past everything I know, in a straight line, killing time. I pass by the rape house, the 7-Eleven where Kal works, the police station, the school I go to, the football field that beautiful Artemis runs to every morning without fail, Old Man Wade's house, my and Megan's place…

Megan.

I'll miss her.

I drive past it all, and I realize that I'm saying good bye to it. Why? I don't know. It's like I know that, when this is over with, I'm going to be just as dead as the guy in the back of this stolen cab.

_Then it's fitting,_ I think, _that I end this story here._

I drive up to the cemetery. Joseph Wade is buried behind those gates. I press the front bumper to them, hit the gas, and just push right through the bars and the locks like they're made in China and my cab thinks it's muscle from Detroit.

When I cut the engine, we're alone. In silence.

Time to end it.

I get out of the car and open the rear doors. Mr. Rape falls out in a heap, the tequila bottle smashing on the driveway.

"Get up," I say.

He stutters a bit, wondering what's happening.

I have the gun pointed exactly between his eyes. "If you're wondering if I have enough of a dick to pull this trigger," I snarl, "it may be the last thought you ever have."

He's still groggy, but his eyes are wide as dinner plates, bloodshot and bleary, and they don't blink. Eventually he gets up. I walk him up the nearest path with the gun pressed between his shoulder blades.

"This is my handgun," I say. My mind actually wanders through a bunch of movies with guns in it, and I'm giddy with mirth as I bastardize the Rifleman's Prayer from _Full Metal Jacket_. "There are many like it, but this one is mine."

"What?"

Yeah, he's right. Not nearly scary enough. I don't want to do any lines by Dirty Harry—everyone already knows _Do I feel lucky?_ and_ This is a Forty-Four Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world._ So I settle on something a little scarier: I pull the hammer on the gun back. it makes a noisy _cli-click_.

"Now doesn't that just torque your jaws?" I ask. Lines from _Phone Booth._ 2002 film, Colin Farrell and Kiefer Sutherland. "I love that. You know like in the movies just as the good guy is about to kill the bad guy, he cocks his gun. Now, why didn't he have it cocked? Because _that _sound is scary."

He mumbles something. I don't care what it is. I just keep marching him until I see exactly what I'm looking for.

An empty grave.

Cemeteries are always having holes dug. This one is ready for filling, probably for the next unpredictable death that'll take place in the city. I decide that it's the best place for his body, and march him over until his feet are a step from the edge.

"At this range the exit wound ought to be about the size of a small tangerine."

He slowly folds under his own weight, and drops to both knees, looking down over the ledge of a six foot drop, staring into the abyss. And I know that this isn't a movie anymore. There aren't any lines I can say that are enough for this, here and now. So I tell him the truth.

"This bullet is very big," I say slowly. "It's positioned to do the most damage possible. It'll tear through your spine first, paralyzing you. It'll shred your lungs and your heart and all the tiny little arteries and veins on the way out. And you'll drop into the hole. And then I'll go pick up that girl you've been killing every night, and she'll bring her kid, and I'll bring them back here and we'll dance, we'll fucking _dance_ around your corpse before the cops ever show."

He's silent, but shaking.

"You feel like dying tonight?" My voice quakes, but it's still hard. "You deserve it, motherfucker, I can tell you that much."

There's a sound, now.

Sobs.

It's the sound of a grown man crying. Then he pleads. Then he prays.

"Holy Father," he whisper-sobs into the grave, "Holy Father, I'm so sorry…I'm so sorry…"

I'm not God.

I don't care about where God fits into all this. All I know is that this waste of human life is slowly, gleefully killing a woman every night, and it's up to me, me alone, Wally West, a stupid _teenager_, to solve this problem.

And the solution is right here.

He'll drop into the grave once the bullet goes through him. I can escape in the cab. I can ditch it, wipe my fingerprints off of the steering wheel, or maybe just burn the whole thing. I can get away with it. Nothing can go wrong.

Except.

I begin to shiver.

I begin to shake.

I begin to quiver and gasp for sips of air at the thought of killing another person. The bravery I once had, the plucky teenage attitude that let me quote movie lines, it's gone now. I have to do this as a boy, surrounded by his own childishness.

I ask you:

What would you do if you were me? Tell me.

Please.

_Tell me._

But you're so far away from this. Your fingers scroll down the text on your screens, you move your mouse and click to continue reading, and all you get are the pictures I send to you through my words, connecting us both. But your eyes are safe. Your soul is still pure. This story is just another few minutes of passing time, in your mind. For me it's real. It's everything. I have to go through with this, I have to end this man's life and ruin my own so that a mother and her son can continue on with theirs. They'll go on living. I will have died inside. I want to scream at you, why? Why do I have to do this? Isn't there a better way?

Would you kill this man?

You probably couldn't. Wouldn't. But I feel you silently helping me. Giving me support. Encouragement. You want me to pull this trigger, while you sit there in comfort and watch us in agony. Every drop of the blood that coats this ground tonight is a direct result of my finger pulling this trigger, and the soothing hands that lent me the strength to do so.

It's your bloodlust that helps me murder.

Right now, you could go to a different website, change the TV channel, watch a different movie, close the book…

But you won't.

You cheer me on and tell me I can do it.

First light seeps through the air. The sky is brightening. I've been standing here for who knows how long.

"I got chosen to do this," I say. "I don't even know who's behind it. But I've been watching what you do to that woman and her son, and I'm putting an end to it. Do you understand?"

He nods, slowly.

"Don't you realize you're going to die because of what you've been doing?"

"Please," he begs. He hunches over in a half breakdown. He'll fall and break his neck if he goes any lower. A sick, twisted sobbing wracks his body. "I'm sorry, I'm s…I'll stop, I promise I'll stop…"

"Stop _what_?"

He hurries his words. "You know…"

"No. I'm not entirely sure. I want to hear you say it."

"I'll stop forcin' her when—"

"_Forcing?_ Is that what you call it?"

"Okay. Raping."

"Go on."

"I'll stop raping her, I swear."

"What the hell makes you think I can actually trust you?"

"Jus' _cause_, man, _please_…"

"That's not the answer I'm looking for. So long."

"Because if I do it anymore, you'll kill me!" His voice is so desperate.

Mine's worse. "I'll _kill_ you? Motherfucker, _I'm killing you now!_" God, I'm coated in sweat and shaking with this bloodfever. "How does it feel, huh? How do you feel, right now?"

"I feel…just like her."

"You scared out of your mind yet?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Because that's the last thing you're ever gonna feel."

I check to make sure the safety is off.

"Oh God please don't..."

The trigger is hot against my sweaty finger.

"Please don't..."

My tears are welled up, my teeth are chattering, and I close my eyes so tightly with the muzzle hanging in the air and I breathe and I breathe and I _squeeze_…

"Please..."

The noise of the gunshot shatters me like I'm made of porcelain. The recoil numbs my hand. The stench of burnt gunpowder soaks through my pores.

His body hits the bottom of the grave and is very, very still.


	12. Chapter 12

**Jack**

"**Solutions are not easy to come by. They don't present themselves, neatly wrapped in colorful paper. Like anything of value, they have to be dug for, sometimes in the hardest ground to break: one's own human clay. More often than not, mining one's self leads to fool's gold, unless the pick is taken to one's own pride. One must break off a chunk, and swallow it, a bitter pill for a better tomorrow."**

**Lex Luthor.**

I stagger off the bus and put my hand on the doorknob of my place. There's a feeling in me that resembles a complete and utter lack of life. I'm dead inside. For the first time, I understand that term, _dead inside_. Last night's Death Lady could walk in on me in my bedroom right now with a noose all tied and ready, and I'd open the closet door for her and assume my proper place beneath the hangar bar. Wouldn't even put up a struggle.

I don't care about anything anymore.

I try to shrug the feeling off—_cheer up, it's over, get on with your life—_but it always climbs back on.

That damn gun.

I can still feel it in my hand. The warm, soft buzzing in my palm after I'd pulled the trigger. It's lying at the bottom of a canal right now.

The cab's still at the cemetery. I wiped my prints from the steering wheel and everything, even made sure to check for spilled blood or stray hairs. I wanted to set the thing on fire, but I didn't have any way to start one.

As I walk into the kitchen, I hear his body hit the earth again.

I go to my room. I lay down on the bed. I hug my pillow.

I wish someone would hug me back.

The sun's pretty high up in the sky by now. People are up and at work, or at school. I should be in class right now. Another first: I'm playing hooky. I guess I'm supposed to feel all dangerous and cool right now. I don't feel anything. I can't even feel tired. Mostly, all I think about is how unlikely it is that anyone on my street has ever had a night like mine.

Sleep doesn't come. Instead I just lay there, eyes wide open, in a meditative state of just trying not to think.

The hours pass by like cars on a freeway.

It feels like late afternoon when I sit up and head for the bathroom, but when I go get something to eat from the kitchen I find out from the stove clock that it's only

_11:00 a.m._

and I haven't had anything to eat for…how long now? Do I even feel hungry at all?

Eh. I'll eat when I feel hungry. Food's getting expensive now. And the school year's almost over—don't think I'll be doing much tutoring during the summer.

On the kitchen table is an envelope with my name written on it.

_Of course,_ I think. _Maybe I should just toss it into the garbage can._

Pfft. Right.

I reach over and pick it up, holding it in my fingers the way you hold a used tissue. I slump in my chair, thinking _I wonder how many people have ever been frightened of a letter? It's a piece of paper covered in words. That's all it is._

Well. The words might be of death or rape or blood-filled orders.

And I know that I've got to open it sooner or later.

I tear the envelope open. A card falls out, landing facedown on the floor. A handwritten letter is next, tumbling to the kitchen table. Megan unlocks the front door and walks in.

I don't look at her.

All I can do is stare at the facedown card on the floor and try not to cry.

"Another one?" she asks.

I nod.

She pauses. "What suit this time?"

"Hearts." No need to look.

"And…you still have no idea who's sending them?" Megan's voice is nervous, filled with insecurity and hopefulness. She doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know what to say to me, the boy that she knows is in love with her yet she doesn't want. She steps closer, as if to share a conversation at the table with me, then stops when she sees the dried blood in my hair and on my hands.

"Ohmigod. Wally," she whispers. "What _happened_ to you last night?"

"Don't worry."

I feel a bit pathetic, to tell you the truth. You see the guys in movies that get all beat up, and they look so damn heroic and sexy that it's amazing. But in real life you don't feel that way at all when a pretty girl stares at the evidence of your incompetence. A black eye means you know how to get punched, end of story. And my skinned palms just say that I don't know how to run properly. My head? I don't have the energy to come up with an idea for it.

Megan, however, is perfect. She's washed all the sex away, smelling like clean skin and sunshine. Her hair is gorgeous, and there's a little strand that falls down over one eye and almost touches her nose. She wears jeans, tan shoes, and a blue shirt with a Superman logo on it.

She says it: "Wally, you look terrible."

_You have no idea,_ I want to say. _You have no possible idea._

"Are you…well, are you _seriously_ hurt? Because we can get you to the hospital, I've got my car—"

I hold up one hand and quiet her. "It's only my pride," I say, and my voice cracks. "Only my pride."

"Was it because of the card?"

I don't say anything.

"What do you have to do with it? This is serious, Wally. Whoever's doing this…what are they making you do? What did you _do_ last night?"

I see it all again in my eyes. Should I tell her? Why not, what's the worst that can happen, why bother caring about consequences now, Wally? Afraid she's not going to like you anymore?

"I had to kill a man who was pretty much raping a woman every night." And I say it so calmly, too.

Megan is quiet for a very long time.

I don't care. I'll wait forever if I have to. Let her call the cops.

"Are you serious?" she asks.

"Would I be joking about something like that?" I try to get some anger and frustration into my voice, but it just doesn't come. I'm not…alive. So I look at Megan, trying to feel something.

She doesn't look at me back. Doesn't dare. She's afraid she'll know the answer by the look on my face. "Did you do it?"

I shouldn't say anything. Because Megan will never know, and there's nothing she can do to help. She can't even try to understand. She'll never hear the sobs of that little boy on the front porch. She'll never lock eyes with a tired young woman who is crying on a gas station floor. She'll never know the cold of that gun. She'll never understand the hard work that Artemis puts into one single shot, or know how desperate Old Man Wilson was to know that Joey forgave him.

For a second or ten, I'm lost inside those thoughts.

When I climb back to the kitchen table, and Megan's still there, I answer her question.

"No, Megan. I didn't kill him."

She looks at me, locks eyes with me, and her relief is so touching that it brings tears. I don't blink, but I don't wipe them away, either.

"Then what did you do?"

Slowly, I say the words. I see them as I replay them out loud.

"I kidnapped the guy and I put him in a cab that I stole. We headed over to the cemetery. I broke in and pushed him over to a pre-dug grave. I jammed the gun to his head. I took aim." Treading lightly here doesn't help. "And I adjusted my aim and missed."

I think about what a shock it was to him to find out that he was still alive. Falling into the grave had crushed the wind from him. Each breath he took was a gasp, sucking up life, drinking it down, harvesting it in his lungs. It was over. The concussive force from the gun, the blossom of flame, the hot gas, the grains of unburnt gunpowder, had all combined to blow his left ear to bloody ribbons, certainly leaving him deaf in one side, but all he could think about was how he was still alive. Breathing up the dirt till it lined his lungs.

I remember seeing the bullet crash into a headstone five yards away.

The aftermath of a dead man was probably still lying in the flat, neatly-dug grave.

"He'll probably find out where I live, somehow," I finish, lame. "Pretty soon whoever's giving me these cards is gonna find out that I messed up the hit and try to…find me, also. So I'm gonna pack a few things. Spend a couple days hidden somewhere."

Megan doesn't know what to say.

I shrug and stand up.

"Did he deserve to die?" she asks quietly.

I stop. My eyes flash. "What's _deserve_ got anything to do with what goes on in this world, Megan?"

"All right," her hands rise up gently, palms out to me. "Calm down."

"Calm down?" I snap now. Finally. I feel something, and it's the poison in my blood being thrown back up through my words. "Calm _down_? While Kal and Robin go on with their lives, while Connor lives like the big man on campus, while you're _fucking every guy that doesn't give a shit about you, _I'm out there being told to blow people's brains out! And you want me to _CALM DOWN?"_

I throw my chair across the kitchen and it shatters a picture frame on the wall.

Megan stands up. "You've gotten other cards?" she says very quickly. "What were those supposed to be?"

"Never mind those."

"What were they, Wally?"

She doesn't care that I'm behaving like a jackass, and she's never given me an order like this before. "I had to visit an old man, and help a pretty girl out with her archery."

"Did you do good things? Things that only you could do?"

I slow down. "Yeah."

"Was last night worth it, for the sake of them?"

Damn.

I hate her.

I slump down, down, to the tiles on the kitchen floor, just like the woman. "It's just…"

I sigh.

The anger has burned out of me, and I'm _so tired now…_

"I just wish it weren't this hard, you know?" I make sure not to look at her anymore. I have no chance with her, no chance at a future where I hold her body to mine. No chance at being her man. "I wish it were someone else who was chosen for this. Someone like Connor, maybe, at least he's competent. I wish I didn't have to do all this. I wish I didn't have this responsibility."

It all comes gushing out of me then. The dam breaks.

"And I wish you were with _me,_ and not those other guys. I wish it was _my_ skin on yours…"

There you have it, folks.

Stupidity and weakness in their purest, most idiotic forms.

"Oh, Wally." Megan looks away. "Oh, Wally."

We sit there. Only sit there.

We don't touch.

We don't make up.

The Happily Ever After doesn't arrive. She doesn't touch me, hold me close, doesn't kiss me on the lips, doesn't run her tongue over mine, doesn't whisper that she loves me, that she was just so unsure, doesn't say that it was all a mistake, an act, doesn't tell me that she's so happy to hear me say those words.

I never should have told her my true feelings.

Eventually she says, "You're my best friend, Wally."

You can kill a guy with those words.

"Can't we just be friends?"

Forget bullets and guns.

Four words. Let's just be friends. And you know, clichéd as those four words are, I'm amazed at how many girls want to be Just Friends right after they've crushed a guy's heart.

We sit in silence for a little while, and I look at Megan's legs and lap. If only I could curl up and sleep there. But it'll never happen. And there's still the latest card, still the unread letter.

It's decision time.

I've got to keep going through hell.

So I pick myself up, go back to the table, and lean down over the letter.

"Is it from him?" she asks.

"The card dealer," I nod. "Yeah."

And so I read.

_Dear Wally,_

_First of all, congratulations on making it home. I certainly hope that Cheshire wasn't too rough on you. She likes you, really, due to the fact that you've made such progress. And that still holds true right now—even though you didn't kill the man._

_To that I say: Well done._

_You didn't exactly deal with the situation in a very neat, orderly manner,(I thought you could have used Cheshire's method of fake suicide from last night) but I must award points for style and sheer brilliant improvisation. Stealing a cab, driving to a cemetery at night—quite the dramatic one, aren't you?_

_Also, in case you're wondering, Mr. Rapist has been taken care of. We've managed to convince the police that he was the one who stole the cab and crashed it into the gate. We had to retrieve the gun from the canal—no easy task, mind you, but nothing worthwhile ever is—and Cheshire found a way to plant it nearby the man, making it look like he was suicidal. He's now sharing a prison cell with several members of the Aryan Brotherhood and is doing just fine._

_The kill order on your head has been removed. _

_Of course, it can always be put into action again. So do us all a favor and don't go thinking that you're out of the woods yet. A lot of work still remains, and yes, a lot of pain. I apologize, but that it the way it must be._

_Now, for the final card._

_Matters of the heart are not something quite as simple as the last three missions you've undertaken. That is why this particular King has been saved for last. Do you think you're up to it?_

_No need to answer. The question is redundant._

_After all, you certainly wouldn't have said that you were up for last night. But you did it anyway. You survived._

_Good luck, and keep going. _

_I'm quite sure that by now you realize your life depends on it._

_Goodbye._

I reach and pick up the card, still holding it facedown. Should I wait until I'm alone to look at it? Should Megan stay free of this?

I look at her. She looks back at me, waiting for me to decide.

I decide to flip the card over. I read the writing.

And I close my eyes and feel the weight of the world return to my shoulders. "Shouldn't have thought it'd be quick and easy," I mutter.

It's not like before. Not a single time and address.

It's three of them.


	13. Chapter 13

**Queen**

"**One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life."**

**E.M. Forrester**

* * *

**A/N: I hope you all will forgive the long hiatus from the story. I had personally resolved to start writing the next chapter as soon as episode eleven of the show came out…and I'm still waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Although I will be honest, part of my procrastination came from not wanting to finish the story; the end approacheth soon, and I'm gonna miss this fic when it's over.**

**To atone for my unexcused hiatus, this, I believe is my longest chapter yet. I hope you all like it, and I'll get back to you once it's over.**

* * *

_9451 Sheridan Street, 4:54 p.m_

The bus drops me off six minutes before the first location's deadline, and I start walking. It's a shopping area, a collection of strip malls and fast food restaurants and laundromats. I check each store number that I can find, repeating a mantra of _ninety-four fifty-one_ again and again in my head. When I finally get to the number, the sign over the door surprises me.

Karate America.

I didn't even know my town _had_ a karate dojo. I mean, sure, it makes sense that there's some kind of martial arts studio in every major town across the country, but still. Am I just not keeping my eyes open?

Then again, most people probably don't know if their neighborhood has a dojo or not. Life can keep you pretty blind when you've got problems to focus on every day.

I shake my mind off of the yoke of self-philosophy, and I step up to the darkly-tinted glass door, pulling it open with a little difficulty—why do doors to public domains always have to require Schwarzenegger arms to open? A wave of cold hits me first, followed immediately by the overpowering smell of musk.

I find myself inside a glass box of a waiting room, looking out on about twenty people standing on a huge blue mat who, despite the sign outside, are most definitely _not_ wearing karate uniforms. Instead of the traditional white cotton bathrobes and colored belts, these people are dressed in identical black gym pants and black T-shirts with some kind of symbol printed on it, and it's not Oriental. Maybe Sanskrit?

In front of the class, a blonde man with a goatee notices me out of the corner of his eye. "Mister Harper," I hear him bark. He sounds more like a coach than a drill sergeant.

In the back of the class, I see a familiar shock of red hair on top of a student who calls out, "Sir!" God, I'm encased in a solid glass box, but I can hear these guys perfectly.

"Lead the class in warm ups. Get creative for five minutes, then close it off with sprints."

"Yes, sir!" Roy Harper runs to the front of the class to take his place, and the guy giving the orders walks off the mat towards a door leading to the room I'm standing in.

It's from this guy that I catch my first sight of the fabled martial-artist's graceful movements: his arms swing loose, his stride is purposeful and quick and light, but it seems like the rest of his body, the torso and neck and head, are all still, floating. I only see him take five or six steps before he gets to the door, but that's plenty for me to realize that this guy has had some serious rewiring of his body language circuits.

He opens the door. "Hello there, sir."

It's the first time in my life that anyone has ever called me sir. And even that single word is spoken uniquely; instead of addressing me like a I'm a customer—or worse, a superior—this guy calls me sir and makes it seem like old-fashioned, respectful, manners. Like when Gimli called Frodo, "Master Baggins."

I shut my brain off for a second and say the first thing that comes to mind. "This isn't karate, is it?"

Mr. Goatee's face splits into a grin. "I know. The sign, right? Karate America is the name of the group that owns this studio. We teach Krav Maga here."

I blink a few times to let him know that I'm woefully unqualified to understand. "What's Krav…Kra—"

"Krav Maga?" He says it a little slowly, but the grin stays front and center. "Don't worry, a lot of people haven't heard of it yet. Hasn't been mentioned in enough movies, if you ask me, but people are starting to get educated as time goes on. I'm the chief instructor here, my name's Oliver Queen. Come with me?"

He motions us to a back office. As the door opens, I take a last look at the class: everyone is shadowboxing. I'd be humiliated to be punching the air like that. Can you really learn how to fight if your opponents are imaginary?

When I turn my attention to the office I'm entering, I see three chairs and a desk.

Robin is sitting behind the desk, organizing papers.

"Mr. Grayson," Oliver Queen says. "We have a gentleman here who wants to know about Krav."

Robin looks up from the papers and his eyes achieve dinner-plate wideness. _"Wally?_"

I'm pretty sure he and I are mirror images in the ocular diameter department.

For a second, Mr. Queen soaks up the familiarity between us. "You two know each other, I take it?"

"He's my best friend," I say. "Dude, I had no idea—I thought you had private tutors or something when it came to self-defense!"

"Well, you never really _asked,_ y'know…" Robin's eyes go down and he scratches the back of his head.

"That's probably my fault," Mr. Queen says, pointing a thumb against his own chest. "There's a certain amount of...secrecy, for lack of a better term—that comes with studying here."

On the other side of the wall, I hear something that sounds like a refrigerator being tipped over and crashing to the ground, followed by hoots of laughter.

"That didn't take long," Mr. Queen mutters, and he reaches beind the desk to open a drawer. "Red usually favors the takedown lessons, for some reason. I better get back out there; Mr. Grayson, can you handle this for me?"

"You know it, sir." Robin reclines back in his chair, arms behind his head. When Mr. Queen pulls his hand out from the desk, he's holding a dark black pistol. He marches to the door to rejoin the class, a glint of mischief in his eyes, and I make sure not to get in his way.

When the door closes, I whirl and face Robin. "Is he gonna go postal on them?"

"Almost." Robin nods. "Listen and you'll hear it."

Without a second to lose, too: Mr. Queen's voice roaring out, _"GUN!"_ followed by the pitter-patter hailstones of bodies falling to the floor. "_Good! Carry on, Mr. Harper!"_

"If you think he's loud," Robin says, "you should hear his girlfriend. Pretty sure she can break glass if she tried."

"Robin. What the hell is this place?"

"It's Krav Maga," he says, simply. "Israeli national martial art—even though it's not really an art, so to speak, but that's just depending on your opinion—and it's pretty effective."

"Israeli?" Not that I know anything about Israel, aside from a bit about the religious stuff. "Let me guess: secret techniques, thousands of years old, lifetime of practice required, and expensive as hell?"

"Flat out wrong on the first three counts, and the fourth one depends on your salary." He stood up and cleared the papers off the desk, placing them neatly inside of a file cabinet. "I have a part time job here," he explains. "I tell people what they need to know whenever Mr. Queen is busy. Now, when it comes to Israel, yeah, those guys've been in one conflict or another for the past two thousand years. But Krav was invented by a Jewish boxer who had just fled Germany in the early stages of WWII. He came back to Israel and wanted to teach his people a quick and effective way to fight, so he used what he knew and developed Krav."

Through the wall, I hear what sounds like Wolverine going into a berserker rage. The voice belongs to a female.

"How long have you been coming here?" I ask.

Robin does a quick mental calculation. "One…no, almost two years, now. _Man_, time flies."

"Is this where they taught you how to disarm that guy who robbed the store?" I ask. "You never told me how you did that."

"Again, genius, you never asked." He sits down and folds his hands. "Look, part of learning Krav means keeping your mouth shut about learning it. You show off, you brag, guess what? You're just asking to get shot or stabbed or whatever. If people ask us questions about it, yeah, we go ahead and tell them whatever they want to know. But it's just not a good idea to go running your mouth off."

You know, I never really saw it before. But Robin has always been the most mysterious out of my entire group of friends. Connor and Kal, they don't talk as much as I do, but that's normally because a) Connor loves to be all serious and dark and damaged—the chicks love it—and b) Kal wears everything about himself right on his appearance. Take one look at the tattoos on his arms, the color of his hair, the shape of his eyes, and you know that he's not from around here. (The fact that he won't tell me where he's from gets a little annoying, but I think that's more out of entertainment for himself than for any desire to be mysterious.)

But Robin has always been the person we know the least about. And the scary thing is, he keeps his mysteriousness invisible—we don't _know_ that we don't know much about him. Adopted by Bruce Wayne, overachieving in every school subject, and yeah, he's young and likes to have fun. But what he does in his off time? Who he is when Connor and Megan and Kal and I aren't watching?

Never thought it was this, to be honest. "So you've been training to be a crime fighter."

"No. Wrong." And he says it with concrete force, like there's no possibility of an alternative. "We don't learn how to fight _anything _here. We learn how to stop someone from hurting us. We learn how to survive, and how to stop a threat. A _fight_ is a confrontation, kind of like a dance between monkeys to find out who is the alpha male; it takes two people to fight, because neither of them will back down and eventually it just escalates into fists flying, until dominance is asserted. You have to be _looking_ for trouble to get into a fight. Here, we teach you how to avoid fighting, until it becomes unavoidable."

"And when it does?"

"Like that robbery?" He rolls his eyes. "I wanted that guy to just take our money and go, but he wouldn't have it—not that Connor was making it any easier. So when he got close enough and made it clear that he was going to hurt us, even though we were gonna give up the money, I took him down."

I replay that scene in my head again. Robin had acted so _fast _that day. I mean, one second the guy's pointing a gun, and the next he's lying on the floor with a broken trigger finger and a crushed nose, half conscious. Sure, I'd seen him move, but it had all been a flurry of punches, a blur of arms and legs.

"Whatever it was that you did—and to be honest, Rob, I have no idea—do you think you could teach me how to do it?"

"Give or take a few classes. You've got to be serious about learning this stuff if you want to learn gun defense."

"Contrary to my normal state of attitude," I say, "I _am_ serious." And then it hits me: I really am. I want to learn whatever it is that they're teaching here, and never mind the fact that I was brought here because of a playing card. Who am I supposed to be helping out here, anyway?

"We'll see about that." He stands up. "Come on. If you want to start learning, you can start now."

Whoa. "I don't have a uniform."

He waves a hand and points at his own outfit. "The reason we wear gym pants and T shirts in here is because they resemble street clothes. You can wear jeans your first class."

"I'm short on cash."

"First time's free." He holds open the glass door leading into the classroom. "If you like the class, then we talk about prices later."

"And if I don't like it?"

"Then we cut off your penis, mail it to your family, and take you out to the back alley to cave your skull in with a metal pipe." He punches my shoulder playfully. "Come on. Krav's not meant for all of us. I'll lead you through some stretches, then we'll find out how well you do."

* * *

_6:00 p.m._

I limp like Quasimodo into the 7-Eleven, making wounded puppy dog noises, too wrecked and beat up to even feel much surprise that this was the location of my second address. Not tired in the sleepy sense, no—this is more of a bone deep, muscle-aching weariness, the kind I haven't felt in years. Ever, actually.

Kal whistles low when I made it to the counter and practically sprawl across it. "Was she worth it?"

"Shut up," I mutter, propping my head up on one hand. "Did you know that Robin's training to become Jason Bourne?"

"Of course," he nods. "You didn't talk to him after the robbery?"

I glare at him.

"Ah." He shakes his head and makes his way from behind the register over to the coffee station, motioning for me to follow. He whips out a rag and started wiping up coffee spills. "I take it you just came from your first Krav lesson?"

"My _only_ Krav lesson," I clarify, staying right the hell where I am, thank you very much. I readjust my position and hop up onto the register counter, massaging my thighs. "Did you know that they want a hundred and twenty dollars a month?"

"Indeed I do."

That gets my attention. "So you've been there? You've taken—

"The free lesson? Yes. We learned basic short stick combat and how to get out of sleeper holds."

I grunt. "Well, today was leg blocks, knee strikes, and pressure points in the thighs." I'm going to be black and blue down there for a month.

Kal finishes with the cleaning and begins rearranging items on shelves into their proper place. "If Robin is any proof, and if you should decide to continue learning, the aches and pains will eventually subside."

"_Pfft_. Right. No way, man, I'm done with that class."

Kal doesn't say anything. His silence, however, is that annoying kind that can speak volumes, a special weapon used by disappointed girlfriends and wives the world over. I groan.

"You think I should join." It isn't a question.

Kal looks up at me and nods. "Very much so."

"Why? It's expensive as hell, and it's not like you're taking it, too."

Kal steps away from the shelves and into a back room, coming out with a mop and a bucket. "I have no need to join up with that class. I learned another technique back home."

What was this? Kal was giving me background information about his past? A story taking place in his mysterious Land Of Birth? It's like Sportsmaster is encouraging Artemis to go for the silver medal.

"What kind of technique?" I ask.

Kal pauses, looks at me again, and asks, "You know that information comes at a price, right?"

"What price?"

He tosses the mop at me. I catch it and only got _slightly_ rained on.

"You mop. I talk."

Ordinarily I would protest, but Kal might only give out opportunities like this once every solar eclipse or so. So I shuffle my aching ass off the countertop and use the mop handle like a walking stick, shuffling over to the bucket.

Kal takes my place on the counter. "I got a very old fashioned education when it came to learning my style—"

"What's it called?"

"Interrupt me again," he says gently, "and I will discipline you."

He doesn't look angry or even offended, but I can tell by the tone of his voice that he isn't kidding either. I make a gesture with one hand that says _My apologies, oh exalted king. Pray continue._

"It doesn't really have a name," he starts again. "I always thought of the training as lessons in growing up. It's extremely different from what Robin studies—Krav is based on facts and is very quick to learn. What I studied was more Eastern in nature. It took years for my teachers to just accept me into the class."

I start mopping.

"When I was little—five, maybe six years old—my mother showed me a school where a lot of older kids would go to after our daily lessons. They wouldn't come out until after the sun went down. Mother told me that they were learning how to become men behind those walls, and the things they were learning were completely secret. My father was not around to raise me—he was a criminal, I later found out—and I knew that there was no way that I could learn without getting into that class. So after I was done learning reading and math for the day, I tried sneaking in."

Here Kal's face allows a small, warm grin, the memory apparently a good one. "I got carried out and tossed into the dirt by one of the teachers. He told me that I wasn't allowed in, and they wouldn't teach me anything, so I might as well go home. I did go home that night, and I told my mother what had happened. And the next day I tried again. And then the next, and the next, day after day of trying to sneak in and learn, day after day of getting caught and thrown out. Some days I was politely asked to leave, some days they just threw me out. They always had a different excuse. I would be told that the school was already too crowded, or that the school was poor and couldn't afford one more. It was always something else. The only thing that stayed the same was that I was never allowed to pass through the doors."

A trio of guys some in, customers looking for Big Gulps and road food. Kal pauses his story, gets behind the register, and does his job while I continue to play janitor over by the bathroom. When they leave, he picks up right where he left off as if there hasn't been any interruption.

"It turns out that the refusal at the door is part of the tradition. In fact, it was the first test, before I even had a lesson—you don't learn how to become a man unless you're truly dedicated. The teachers rejected you, the students mocked you when they came out at night, but if you waited long enough and endured, you would eventually be allowed to come inside."

"What happened when you got in?"

"Nothing. I was told to sit in a corner, and I was ignored."

I stop mopping. "Dude. You seriously needed to find another hobby."

"There wasn't much else going on over there," he smiles, hopping up onto the counter and sitting cross-legged. "After about a month of sitting in a corner, one of the teachers started giving me chores to do. Most of them I'd never done before in my life—cut firewood with ridiculously heavy axes, clean floors until they gleamed, fix leaking roof thatches while it was raining—and they never told me how to do any of it, not even hints about where tools might be. A lot of days I was given three or four things to do at once. And they didn't give me any guidance. No help whatsoever."

"Never figured you for a masochist, Kal. Please tell me you came to your senses eventually."

"In a way," he says. "But that was only after I came here. My mentors weren't being cruel, Wally. It was compassion."

"Are you _serious_? Dude, did you ever get around to actually _learning_ anything?"

"They were teaching me from the first time they turned me away at the door." He looks over the tiles, nods, and checks the clock on the wall. "Six thirty. My shift's done."

"Oh, you are _not_ just gonna leave me hanging like this!" I say, pointing at him with the mop handle. "What the hell was the point of them putting you through all that?"

"Think of it this way, Wally," he says, walking into the back room and emerging with a gym bag slung over one shoulder. "I was a child who wanted to learn. Had the teachers at the door shaken my hand, patted me on the back, taken me inside, and offered me a drink, would they have been preparing me for life? Sure, it was cold and unsentimental, but it was also honest and effective—both of these overwhelmingly."

I put the mop back in the bucket and close my eyes. Robin was studying Israeli martial arts, and now Kal was a graduate of the Shaolin Temple from the sound of things. Ever have one of those moments in your life that makes you feel like you've done absolutely nothing cool, ever?

"Your teachers had a really messed up method," I sigh. If it was six thirty, I only had thirty minutes to get to my next location. "Where are you off to?" I ask.

"The gym. Swimming laps. You?"

I pull out the King of Hearts from my pocket and read the last address. "Sixteen eighty-two Wilson street."

"Ah," Kal nods, and heads for the door. "Say hi to Connor for me."

"Yeah, I will." I pocket the card and then blink. "Wait, what?"

But the doors open, Kal walks through without looking back, and I find myself alone with a mop in my hand, and no idea where to put it.

* * *

_1682 Wilson St. 7:00 p.m._

Connor's place is a house on the outskirts of town. A big, fortress-sized, two story house. With a properly manicured lawn, a gleaming Porche in the driveway, security cameras, a lot of floor-to ceiling tinted windows that are probably thick enough to stop bullets, and a mechanical gate that opens up by itself as soon as I approach. He lives, for lack of a better metaphor, like a millionaire playboy.

The guy is in high school.

I walk the quarter of a mile length of driveway and knock on the double doors. If a butler answers, I'll never let him hear the end of it.

To be honest, I hope that no one answers. I hope that he's not here, or he can't hear me. I hope that I'll get to turn around and walk away. He and Megan… well, it's out in the open now, isn't it? They're together. He's got something that I've ached to have.

Well. Several somethings.

The door opens. Connor stands in front of me.

He's wearing black shorts and boxing gloves, and that's it.

Now, I'm _fairly_ certain that I'm not gay. But I'd be lying if I didn't tell you right now that Connor Kent is fucking ripped.

"You know," I say, "now I _really_ hope you weren't expecting me."

The corners of his lips rise. I don't think I've ever seen the guy with a full on smile before.

He opens the door a little wider, waves me in with one hand. "Come on in," he says. "I need you for something."

"No dinner, no flowers, and you're already coming on this strong? Really, Mr. Kent, I'm not that kind of guy. I need commitment. I need a sign that this is going somewhere."

The inside of his house is remarkably spartan. No pictures or posters or works of art, nothing hanging from walls that you'd expect. Nothing hanging on the walls at all, really. The inside of the house is made of a lot of dark wood, stone, and metal. In the kitchen, every drawer, shelf, cabinet, even the refrigerator, are made of polished steel. The floors are marble, or hardwood. No carpet. Nothing soft.

In fact, the only things that have a modicum of comfyness—a loveseat and couch, both leather, sitting in front of a flatscreen TV wider than most dinner tables—look beyond brand-new. Like they are hardly even looked at, much less used.

"Nice place." I nod my head in appreciation. "Are Carlisle and Esme around? Those pesky Cullen boys cut me off earlier in their sports car. I need to give them a nice, stern talkin'-to."

"Dude, if I had any idea what you were talking about," Connor says, opening a door that I presumed led into a garage, "I still wouldn't admit to it."

"That's the thing about you macho types," I sighed, following him. "You couldn't spot a pop culture reference if it stood in a sunlit meadow and sparkled like My Little Pony."

"Twilight, right?"

"Yes! There's hope for the man yet!" I punch both fists into the air as I step into the garage. Unlike the rest of the house, this place looks very lived in. Tools line a library's worth of shelves, and the disassembled parts of what looks like a motorcycle—or a BMX bike from mars—are front and center on the floor. The entire place is well lit. There's a refrigerator in the corner, an old plastic one that was probably made a few world wars back, that rattles and hums as it kicks on. Something tells me that it's got more stuff in it than the Terminator Fridge out in the kitchen.

Connor opens a metal wardrobe-looking thing, and inside is a bunch of sports gear. He pulls out a pair of boxing gloves, looks them over, and nods to himself before tossing them both to me. "Put these on."

"What?"

The gloves hit me and I manage to fumble them into my arms before they hit the ground. Everlast, sixteen ounces, velcro straps. Soft instruments of pummeling. And, if the Rocky movies are anything to go by, they don't do jack when you go up against Mr. T.

"I need a sparring partner at the moment." Connor tugs his gloves on and motions me back into the house. "The gym's upstairs."

The freaking _gym_? "Hold on, Mr. Stallone. I didn't come here to go thirteen rounds." Christ, I'm still walking with a limp.

He asks over his shoulder, "So why are you here, Wally?"

He doesn't stop, and I'm forced to follow, gritting my teeth. What do I say? I don't really have a real explanation that won't come off like I'm not crazy. The King of Hearts sent me here?

I decide to go for something a little less drastic. "I just wanted to talk, Connor."

Climbing the stairs, he says, "Put your gloves on."

"That's not going in the _talking_ direction, you know? It's, ah, heading toward a dark and violent highway, right?"

"Manversation."

"What—what the hell does that even _mean_?"

The gym, as it turns out, doesn't have much exercise equipment. There's a weight bench and three kettlebells in one corner, and there's a frame of duct tape on the floor in the dimensions of a boxing ring. A heavy bag hangs from the rafters. It shows sign of a lot of wear: duct tape circles its middle enough times to make it look pot-bellied.

Connor walks into the ring (why do they call it a boxing ring, anyway? It's a freakin' square, people) and turns, facing me in that head on way that makes me want to avert my eyes. I do. I focus on the gloves, and try to finish putting them on. "I need to talk to you," I say, my voice sounding weak and hollow. "It's…about Megan."

"I know."

This causes me to raise my head. "You _know_?"

"Wally. Please. Everyone knows how you feel about her."

"And you—?" I feel the first familiar strands of anger start bubbling their way up through me. "You _knew_? And—and you _still_—how the hell could you—"

"You want to talk," Connor interrupts me, beckoning with one gloved hand. "And we will. We need to get this out in the open. But only _after_ you and I go one rounds."

"I'm not an idiot, Connor! You and I both know you're gonna wipe the floor with me!"

The tiny smile again. "No, I'm not. I won't be able to."

"Oh? Why? Because I'll tell you, I don't have much of anything going in the department of ass-kickery."

"Because I'm not going to swing at you." He gets in a boxer's ready stance. "Just defense. You, Wally, need to be the aggressor for a change."

The anger is still in me.

"You need to promise that all you'll do is punch me, hit me, and attack me, as hard as you can."

It coils in my gut like an anaconda made from red smoke.

It whispers to me of lashing out.

"Deal?"

I step into the ring.

We bump gloves.

The red smoke in my stomach surges up into my eyes, and…

Well.

I attack.

For the first time in my life, I attack.

* * *

**Aaaaand, cut!**

**Bit of a tiny cliffhanger, that. I hope this chapter wasn't boring for anyone—exposition is tough to make wholly entertaining, unless you're Joss Whedon. Consider this a "breather" episode, where we can catch our breath from the heartaches and assassins and midnight near-murders at empty graves. To be honest, I now understand why professional authors say that writing those scenes in their books (the Dobby Dies scene, as I like to call them) are extremely painful to write—they ARE! After dragging Wally through ten levels of hell for the past couple chapters, I just needed to remind him that he's still got friends, and all isn't doom and gloom.**

**Now that I got this chapter out of the way, maybe we can get a new episode of Young Justice on the air. Whaddya say, Cartoon Network? **

**Shutting up now-V.**


	14. Chapter 14

**King**

**"And now may the blessing of God rest upon all men. **

**I have told unto them the Epic of Kings, **

**And the Epic of Kings is come to a close, **

**And the tale of their deeds is ended. **

**Ferdowsi**

* * *

I wince as I lower myself into the frothing, boiling water of the hot tub. The temperature seems to be somewhere between Earth's Core and Thermonuclear Reactor Meltdown. I wonder if witches gather around this thing every Halloween and cackle while doing witchy things.

Over by the hibachi, Connor pours a healthy dose of lighter fluid onto a small mountain of charcoal. "How do you like your steak?"

"Sharp enough to kill Dracula. Barring that—" (here is where I hiss through clenched teeth as the waterline reaches my crotch)—"cooked medium is good enough."

Connor smirks at my wincing as he tosses a lit match over one shoulder, directly into the grill without so much as looking. The mushroom cloud is impressively formed, well worth any pyrotech's audition into the film industry. Connor, of course, is too cool to look at it, and instead he just heads for the garage while I blink the flashing spots out of my vision.

When I can see again, Connor's back out and he tosses a cold bottle of Dos Equis at my head. I'm fast enough to catch it before getting clobbered in the face for the third time today. "Thanks."

"Yeah."

Manversation. Gotta love the depth of how we communicate. I mean, not ten minutes ago I was trying to beat Connor to a bloody pulp. Now here I am sitting in the guy's backyard, healing in his hot tub, wearing a borrowed pair of his shorts, drinking his beer (how the _hell_ did he get beer, anyway?), and we're about to share a steak dinner. Very bromantic.

And you know…

There _is_ something different between me and Connor, now. It's hard to explain. But now that I've gone toe-to-toe with the guy, even though he didn't actually go toe-to-toe back, I feel like we're just a little bit tighter. For some reason—and I have no idea why—I understand him a little better now that I've had the chance to take a few swings.

Those swings hadn't been enough to do any damage, of course. Connor's been training in boxing long enough to know how to block, bob, and weave. But he couldn't catch every single one of my punches, and even now I can feel the sweet throb in my fists where I caught him with a left hook to the ribs.

Connor flips the steaks over. It smells great.

"The way I see it," he says without looking up from his work, "You're really wanting Megan. Megan really wants me. I really like Megan. That about right?"

"That's about right." I sink deeper into the hissing bubbles until the water reaches my neck. It takes a percentage of my attention away from the familiar heartache.

"You think it ought to be the other way around?"

"Please, dude. I'm seventeen, but I'm not _that_ stupid. Real life doesn't give a shit about whether or not I think things _ought_ to be a certain way."

"I hear ya." He twists the cap off of his bottle and chugs. "You got any plans on how to fix this?"

"_Fix_ this?" I raise an eyebrow and stare at him, incredulous. "What the hell is there to fix?"

He shrugs, keeping eye contact. "You've got girl problems, Wally. You're hating your life. It's written all over you, and we've been reading the writing for weeks now."

I don't have the energy to go into explaining why the story of my life is such an angst tragedy. "It's nothing, dude. Just…normal teenage bullshit."

"Is that what you call it?" His tone sounds unconvinced. "Normal teenage bullshit?"

"Well, what would _you_ call it?"

"Stop." He places his beer down, puts his hands on his hips, sucks in a deep breath and looks at me with such frankness I'm almost unnerved. "You can_not_ trivialize what's wrong with your life by using _nomenclature_, Wally. You forget who you're talking to."

I stop talking. But I don't look away. My eyes smoke.

"You fell head over heels for a beautiful girl. You shared a home with her. You became her best friend. But you can't touch her, when everyone else can. Like a cancer—like _gangrene_—this eats away at you. And all you can do is wish that someday she'll change her mind, see what a great guy you are, and give you the chance that you've been wanting."

This hits a little too close to home, so I continue to say nothing.

"Megan's a great girl, Wally—if you hadn't fallen for her I'd be worried about you. But she thinks of you as a brother."

"Yeah. Someone beat me to the Boyfriend position."

"I did no such thing." Connor flips the steaks. "I held back, Wally. I'm _still_ holding back."

"Dude. I walked in on you guys while you were both in the shower. That's you holding back?"

"It is." He flips the steaks onto the plate, and they're done. "I'm not right for her. I am attracted to her, but I know that I'm not The One, you get me? She's just attracted to me. The problem is, like it or not, she's going to eventually want to take it farther."

He didn't have to clarify. Dating, relationships, engagement, marriage. Love. Life. I could easily picture Megan in a wedding dress…but Connor? In a tux, standing at the head of the altar? That was a tough one.

He drops the steaks onto the table by the hot tub, and I snag one with my fork. Damn. The guy can grill.

"Well," I say between a mouthful of prime farm animal, "I can see why she wants you, at least."

Connor sips from his bottle, then looks at me weird. Like he's studying me. Eventually he says, slowly, "I really don't think you do."

"Come on, dude." I wave my hand at the pool, the hot tub, the gigantic James Bond home behind me. "You're rich like Trump, you're built like a Greek sculpture, and you've got an Aston Martin in the driveway."

He shrugs. "That's just icing. I could lose it all, and it wouldn't matter."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. And chances are, eventually I will. I don't actually own any of this stuff. It's all bought and paid for by my old man." His eyes narrow and a line appears on his forehead. It doesn't take a lot to see that Connor and his father are…a little estranged.

I'd actually seen him once, Connor's dad. He was like an Ubermensche, a future Most Interesting Man In The World. He was a famous author—he'd won a few Pulitzers, even—and he had connections with the most powerful people on the planet. A nice man, truly. Almost without fault.

Connor was the source of that fault.

Clark hadn't known his son was actually alive until Connor was sixteen. I'd never really asked about the details—there are some things you just don't do—but apparently the man was so freaked out by the fact that he had a son, he didn't really know how to deal.

Long story short: Connor was given anything he needed. Anything he could want. Except time together with pops.

"Clark went all out on the fun stuff." Connor says with a roll of the eyes, and I have a feeling it's like a release of a familiar, returning pain for him. We all have them, I guess. "But the stuff doesn't matter. I'm hardly even here, to be honest. Most of my time in this house is spent in the garage."

"I noticed." Now I get why the place didn't look lived in. Connor didn't exactly live here. "But you gotta admit, it's a nice place to bring a girl back to."

"I never bring girls here."

"Why not?"

"I prefer their place."

"See, that's what gets me, right there." I point a dripping finger at him. "You're a _natural_, Connor. You get girls without even trying. I've never had that kind of luck. Probably never will."

"You start crying into your beer," he says, "and I will beat your ass until you're dry." Then he stops talking, and looks back at me, giving me that studious eye. Like he's contemplating something.

"What?"

"I was just…thinking." He pauses, looks at the house, and organizes his thoughts before looking back to me. "If you want to have a girl be attracted to you, Wally, you need to learn how to become attractive."

"Gee. And the Nobel Prize for Obvious Understatements goes to…"

"Hang on." He shuts me up and raises a hand. "Seriously. You need to learn this stuff."

"How the hell do you learn attraction?"

"Experience. You have to experiment, try things out. Learn how it's done." He pauses again, thinking, then nods to himself once like he's confirming a decision in his mind. "Okay." He faces me directly. "I'll make you a deal."

I'm quiet. Something in me whispers, _you're about to step foot on a bridge that you can only cross once._

"I'll teach you everything you need to know about being attractive."

I blink. "And in exchange?"

"You stop torturing yourself with being so close to Megan. You move out of your dorm. And I move in."

"What!" Can he be serious? "How is me being homeless a good thing? Because the whole cardboard box apartment thing isn't very stylish these days."

"Of, for the lovva…" he facepalms himself and glares at me. "_Think_, genius." He points a thumb over his shoulder at the house. "I'm offering you a temporary trade."

* * *

My life changes very quickly after that.

First, me and Connor make plans to trade places. The rules are fairly basic: I don't burn down the house, run the utility bills up too high, or take too much unethical advantage of the freakin' sweet home from heaven, and he'll stay with Megan, taking up residence in my old room. The only place in the house that's off limits to me is the garage.

"Touch my bike," he says, "and they'll never find your body."

"Hurt Megan," I say back, "and they'll only find pieces of yours."

We shake on it.

I pack up what little I actually own back at the apartment—it's amazing how much you can fit into a school backpack when you're not actually going to school—and move in the next day. It's pretty cool.

For about an hour, anyway. Once the initial shock of the place wore off, I could see how Connor could give it up so easily. A house is a house. A bunch of walls and a roof, with a few gadgets thrown in. After a few hours of watching TV I was hit with a full blown case of the lonelies.

Loneliness isn't something that's entirely foreign to me. Or any guy, for that matter, who usually spends the last moments before bed in front of a computer screen, masturbating. My own laptop is gone—left behind in the hotel room where Cheshire almost had her fake-suicidal way with me—so not only am I deprived of Porno Tube and Facebook, but I've got no one to talk to.

Megan may have thought of me as nothing more than a friend, but at least that meant I had someone to talk to.

_Oh, quit it, Wally_. I slap myself and jump up from the couch, reaching for my cell. _Things are looking up for the first time in a long time, and you're sitting here whining to yourself. _

I call up Robin, Kal, and Megan (I assume Connor's with her; they may be knocking boots for all I know, but as The Friend it is my delightful privilege to serve as coitus interruptus.) The message I deliver to everyone is pretty much the same: "Get your asses over here, let's play some cards."

I _have_ friends, dammit. I am _not_ some lonely teen in an angst tragedy.

* * *

Connor reads from the card. "What is the very last word said by Clark Gable in the movie _Gone With The Wind?"_

Robin smirks. "We've gotta get more challenging cards. His last word was _'damn'._ And, in the interest of actually having some challenge in this game, I'm gonna allow Wally to ask me a harder one off the top of his head." He looks at me. "Same subject."

"You sure?"

"Dude. The question was about _Gone With The Wind._ Of course the answer has something to do with 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.' Do your worst. Rough me up."

"All right." I don't even bat an eye. "What was the movie about?"

This stumps him. As a result of losing the first question—and having an insufficient grasp on movie and literature history—Robin now has to pay for pizza.

While Connor uses the phone to call up Ping Pong Pizza (I don't get the name, either, but they make a _mean_ stuffed crust with shrooms), I relay my woeful tale of not having a laptop anymore.

Megan shakes her head sympathetically. "And school's gonna be starting up again, too. You need to hurry up and get a new one, Wally."

"Fat chance." I lean back in my chair and toss both hands up. "I'm a science tutor, that's my income. Not much need for extra education when it's summertime."

"Part time job, then?" Robin offers. "The way I hear it, the pay is always terrible and the hours are always either not enough or way too much. It'd be perfect for you to gripe about!"

"He's trying to cut back on the griping," Connor says, one hand covering the mouth on the phone. "Finally realized that it makes him sound more like a little boy than anything, right?" Then he goes back to ordering two larges.

Now, I haven't made any such realizations, myself. But I'm smart enough to know when a valuable lesson is being sent to me covertly. "Connor, I rock to your mouth music," I say, raising a can of Dew in salute. _Message received, Eagle One. Stop complaining._

Kal looks up from the cards he's been shuffling. "You know, Wally, you managed to do an okay job mopping floors."

"Dude, if this is going somewhere that even rhymes with the word 'janitor', then count me out. I don't have money, but I've got my pride, too."

"Janitors are some of the most important people on the planet," he says. "The natural pattern of the universe is to go from order to chaos—gardens become weed-filled jungles, pools become algae incubators, and floors become dirty. Janitors are like lords of order. But I wasn't going to recommend that you become a janitor. You're not that good yet."

"Oh."

He passes the shuffled deck over to me. "I was thinking that you could have my job."

I fumble, and the cards scatter all over the floor. "What?"

"I got my diploma two months ago, plus scholarships to several different colleges of my choosing." Kal doesn't seem too offset by the widening stares that we all aim in his direction. "I want to pay a visit back to my home before I become a college student. That means leaving my job. I'd like to make sure that someone's there to take my place before I go."

Connor hangs up the phone and notices our open-mouthed silence. His eyes settle on Kal. "Told them about heading back home, didn't you?"

Kal doesn't get a chance to answer. I stop conversation by standing up and folding my arms. "I'll do it under only _one_ condition."

Kal is silent, but his eyes tell me that he's listening and willing to be agreeable.

I point one finger at him. "You have to tell me where you're from."

"I never told you?"

"Dude. I've asked you like a million times, and you keep ducking and diving. Either you tell me where you're really from, or you find someone else to take the job."

Robin points out, "What'll you do about money, then?"

"There's three different movie theaters in this town. I'm certain at least one will be willing to use a projectionist."

Robin laughs. "You'd be fired in two days for spending all your time watching the movie."

"Don't change the subject." I turn back to Kal. "Well?"

He looks all around the table, at everyone looking towards him. He's been keeping the location of his birth a secret from a lot of us. Some have been able to figure it out. But the secret has always stayed secret. Eventually he gets back to me and shrugs. "All right then."

I wait.

"I was born in Atlantis."

* * *

Roy Harper drives his foot to the side of my neck. If it connects, I am most likely going to spend the rest of my life in a motorized basket, paralyzed from the brain down.

It's easy to block—he had to swing that huge heavy leg, and all I have to do is raise a forearm up about twelve inches. The pain of connecting is there, I'm sure, but I'm not focusing on it. I'm not even really thinking coherently.

My thoughts are more along the lines of killing Roy.

I trade him a kick of my own—a snapping forward door-stomper that drives directly toward his gut—but he doesn't realize it's a feint until my foot changes targets and winds up shooting straight to his face, clipping his chin. I feel the connection through my shoes.

"_Separate!"_

Mr. Queen barks out the order, and we immediately back off of each other. Good. I can't breathe anymore. I need a rest. And a shower. And a massage for good measure. With a cheeseburger on the side.

"Masks off."

It's a little difficult to take off a fully encompassing face mask when you're wearing boxing gloves, but practice makes perfect.

Roy gets his own mask off, spits out his mouthguard into one gloved hand, and says, "I'm good."

Mr. Queen doesn't care. "Let me see. Teeth."

Roy bares his pearly whites at him, and even I can see that there's no blood. Damn. If he was bleeding, then the match would be over and I could collapse already. Sparring looks cool as hell on the TV, but let me tell you, it's stressful. Like, the most stressful thing you'll do all day—and yes, late commuters, that does include driving bumper to bumper on the way to work. (I think.)

"Okay. Masks back on. Two more minutes. And Mr. Harper, you either start tucking your chin in, or I'm going to wake you up with cold water after the new guy breaks your jaw."

* * *

_6:30 p.m._

I cram the last of my gear into my bag and check my watch. Thirty minutes before I'm due for my shift.

Robin was right about one thing: the hours are lousy, and the pay sucks. But I don't complain. I'm getting paid. And, like a bonus, there's a walk-in freezer in the back where they store the beer—I usually go in there first on nights like tonight, where I have to go straight to work right after Krav class. You haven't experienced bliss until you've stepped into a walk-in freezer after an hour of combat training.

(Freakin' _combat training!_ How cool am _I_?)

I sling my bag over one shoulder and whistle as I make my way out. No limping right now—my muscles are still too warmed up; it'll be at least an hour or so before they start to stiffen and walking becomes a hassle. Roy's already outside, downing a liter of water in two gulps. He sees me and grins, flipping me the finger. "Same time next week?"

I point to my swollen left cheek, where the heel of his shoe had eventually caught me. "Same time next _month_, more like it."

For all the negative press about fighting, for some reason it's a pretty good way to make friends.

I hitch a ride on the bus to work, and when I get there I can't help but think about when Kal had finally revealed his hometown.

Atlantis. Ha.

Like plenty of other guys that don't know jack about geography, I had initially assumed he was pulling my leg, telling me that he had come from the long-lost civilization of a sunken island in the Atlantic. He had gotten a good laugh at that.

"Different Atlantis," he had said. "I'm from Atlantis, the Paradise Island resort. In the Bahamas."

I step into the store and put my gear bag inside my boss's office. Kent Nelson, my boss, notices the swelling and redness on my cheek, but he doesn't say anything. His eyes just twinkle, and he grins, as if to say _Boys will be boys_.

Kent is one of those wise old men that is totally at peace with the world, and knows his place in it. Not sure how old he is, but he carries a cane (though he wields it more like one of those walking sticks that Olde English Nobility used to carry around.) Kent always sits in the office, watching the security monitors and such. If I ever slack off, I know he's sure to see.

So I don't slack off.

I know. Me.

There's always stuff to do: register to attend, coffee counters to clean, items to put back on the shelf—and if there aren't any customers, it's time to whip out a rag and start wiping down surfaces. To Kent, nothing is ever clean enough. It's how one maintains order, he says.

I step behind the register, punch in my code, and start taking care of business. Since I'm the only one there, the hours pass by quickly. You don't focus on the ticking of a clock when you're scurrying hither and non to do the work of two people. I don't complain. Partly because, as Connor best said it, _that shit stopped being effective when you were four_. But mostly it's because I know I can do what's asked of me, and Kent seems like an alright guy.

And he signs my checks.

The hours go by in a stream of chores and dollar exchanges. Eventually my wristwatch beeps, letting me know that shift's up in two minutes.

"Wallace," I hear from the back.

"Yeah?" He never calls me Wally.

"There's a cute one coming in. Take care of her, then hit the road. I'll take it from here."

"You got it."

A cute one, huh? Bless the old man watching the video screens for not taking the good ones all for himself.

And, for some crazy reason, I find myself hoping that it's Artemis.

It's not, of course. That would be just too cool. My last customer of the evening walks in through the open door. Then she turns around, locks it, and turns the sign over the glass so that it reads CLOSED.

Cheshire turns to face me. She smiles.

Not a full on Cheshire Cat grin. But just as creepy.

I have enough composure not to insult her level of criminal activity by raising both hands. That would just be demeaning to us both, and probably reason enough for her to kill me due to lack of tact. Instead I can only look her in the eye and, well…

Pray.

I breathe through open lips as she walks up to the counter. She's dressed in civilian clothes: some kind of Naughty Secretary office getup that would have sexual harassment cases occurring on an hourly basis. There's a black leather messenger bag at her side. It's big enough to hold a submachine gun, I'm fairly certain.

"Hello again," she purrs.

I gulp. Then I say, very slowly, as if I'm kneeling in front of a very large bomb that only has two wires left to cut, "Is this about the last card?"

She approaches the counter and places the bag on top of it. "Perhaps."

"You don't know why you're here?"

"Oh, I know why I'm here, Wally. Precisely. The reasons are two: first, I am here to provide an extra helping of drama to your evening." She winks. My heart flutters like a caged bird. "How am I doing so far?"

"When they give you the award for Best Dramatic Actress, make sure you thank the academy."

"_And_ my mother. The second reason," she continues on, "is because I have a message to deliver." One hand—a _gloved_ hand—undoes the clasp of the bag. She reaches inside.

So this is it. A message from an assassin. I wonder who the message is for? Because it looks like my dead body is going to be the envelope.

She pulls out a playing card.

"This is the last time you'll ever see me," she says, placing it face down on the countertop. "I have to say, I'm glad. Not being able to kill you is getting on my nerves."

She closes the bag, hefts it to her side, and gives me a little wave with one hand.

"Later, skater."

It's the second time I see Artemis's face in my head, and the second time a girl has said that to me.

Only this time, I'm more than happy to see this particular woman turn around, head straight for the door, unlock it, and disappear. Happy. And a little nauseous.

Playing cards make me want to puke.

I swallow dryly, and look down at the little square of paper and plastic coating that's become a symbol of pain and toil to me. I've already gotten four kings. The last one, I'm still not even sure what it's all about. With the others, I always eventually knew what had to be done to help. Save a woman. Talk to an old man. Teach a girl how to do something she was already perfect at. But the king of hearts has only led me back to my three friends, and they don't seem to have any problems that only I can solve.

So why would I get this new card, when I haven't even figured out the old one?

And what the hell card is it gonna be, anyway?

I place one hand down on top of it. Like the first time, I feel a tingle of electricity shoot up my skin and into my brain. This is no ordinary playing card. This is a magic card.

I make one solemn promise to myself: if it's a Joker, then I'm heading straight to the cops and getting into Witness Protection.

I flip the card over.

It's the Ace of spades.

The most powerful card in the deck.

And written in the same blue ink, in the same handwriting, is a message from the same person that's been doing this to me for the past couple of months.

_Agora. Come on over any time. I'll be waiting._

Any time.

He'll be waiting. Or she.

I immediately start walking, and head outside. I wait by the road until I see a cab, then I hail it down.

I tell the driver, "Agora. You know it?"

He looks back at me and says, "Yeah."

"Let's go."

I'm surprised by how calm I am.

I'm surprised that I'm not hesitating. Not pausing. Not procrastinating.

I remember that when I got my first card, it took me days just to get the courage to act. Now I don't even hesitate. I just decide, and start walking.

Maybe it's gonna get me killed tonight.

But it doesn't feel like it.

* * *

Agora, as it turns out, is a pub. The driver lets me out, I give the guy a twenty and tell him to keep the change. There aren't any cars in the parking lot. It's late. But the OPEN sign is lit up, and I can hear what sounds like music seeping out through the walls like a vibe.

The sign out front says 21 Or Older Only.

I don't give it a second glance. Just wrap my hand around the doorknob, yank it open, and walk inside.

Agora is a pub, yes. And it's the kind of pub I could get used to. There's the smell of smoke, but not cigarettes; this is more like pine smoke, the residue of a wood-burning stove. The ground is hardwood, as is the bar. And the tables and chairs. There are rows of bottles, jugs, and even mason jars all lines up on the shelves, and not one of them has a label. There's a juke box playing some kind of funky jazz piano. One pool table. For some reason, I can see a laptop left all alone on the far side of the bar, like a dejected piece of property.

There's only three people inside. One is a mid-fifties guy sitting at a corner table scribbling into a notebook. The second person is a guy playing a game of pool by himself; there's a cigarette hanging from his lips, a pair of black sunglasses over his eyes, and he's wearing a suit. Weird. The third person is a woman behind the bar: close-cropped ultraviolet hair, black tank top, arms covered in tribal tattoos. She's kind of on the muscular side, maybe late twenties. My first thought is: _Lesbian_.

My second thought is: _I might have a chance._

She looks up from a glass that she's swabbing and looks at me. Her face has a warm grin. "You Wally?"

I nod.

"I'm Grace," she nods back. Then she cocks her head over to where the laptop waits patiently. "Step up. Your seat's been reserved. He'll be here in a little bit."

I don't say anything. Just walk over to the barstool and sit. I'm not even sure if I have anything to ask. All I'm doing is waiting for answers.

"You want a drink?"

I shake my head.

"Suit yourself." She glances at the laptop, then back to me. "I read it. Not a bad yarn. Not good enough to be published, of course, but hey, that's why they call it fanfiction, right?"

I blink. "What?"

From behind the bar, a telephone rings. Not chirp, or buzz, or vibrate, but actually _rings_. She rolls her eyes. "Gotta get that, we're expecting news from the fire marshal. Gimme a holler if you change your mind about a drink." She leaves.

I look at the laptop.

On the screen is a webpage of a site I've never seen before. There's a lot of words, and a quotation at the top. Apparently it's a story.

When I read the title, I have to stop for a moment and try again. Then again.

I'm reading a story.

A story online.

And the title of that story is Wally and the Three Kings.

* * *

**Next Chapter: Epilogue**


	15. Chapter 15

**Ace**

It was a dark and stormy night.

The end of hurricane season in south Florida is known to produce some rather surprising weather. There is the occasional hurricane, yes, but more often than not a Floridian is graced with sudden cold fronts, extreme heat waves, a tornado or two, and even the occasional string of rainy days that produce steadily growing floods—very uncharacteristic for land known as the Sunshine State.

It was on one such dark and stormy night, near midnight, that a taxicab with one lone passenger drove down a decrepit lane of road, heading straight for an oncoming beach coastline. Wind howled and bent palm trees over like tall blades of grass. Hailstones dropped like offensive enemy fire from above. Occasionally there was lightning—made all the more eerie by certain bolts that had a peculiar lack of thunder. Heat lightning.

The sky was tearing itself apart, and it occasionally did not have the breath to scream.

The cab driver peered through the furious slapping of his windshield wipers, observing the results of his headlights and their valiant effort to pierce the gloom. On the dashboard was a GPS navigation system that occasionally announced how close he was to his destination.

Fifty feet and closing.

He chanced a glimpse in his rear view mirror at his passenger, timing it with luck: a flash of lightning lit up the world for one instant, and in the space of two heartbeats the driver was granted a snapshot of image: black T-shirt, wavy black hair with a lone strand of grey at the front, dark green eyes. White skin. Ethnic Caucasian from the looks of things; a rare race on this side of a town populated mainly by immigrants. There was a stillness and calm of experienced years in how he sat—the passenger was definitely not a child—but his eyes seemed to burn with the hot sweet fire of youth. He was peering out into the blackness through his passenger window, looking pensive, thoughtful. Unconcerned at the danger of the storm.

There was a ragged, fresh scar on his left hand, between thumb and forefinger.

The driver had tried to get the boy to join in conversation, but there was no luck there; a stray dog would have been better company.

"_You have arrived at your destination,_" the navigational system announced, and the driver's eyes snapped forward to the scene in front of him. He was parked at a long stretch of road that had simply ended, like construction workers from a decade ago had forgotten to come back to work the next day to finish their job. All that was in front of him was a ten foot stretch of gravel, then a dune of beach sand that marked the beginning of the beach. The driver could hear the rhythmic pounding of waves through the wind's howling, like staccato downbeats in a symphony of Mother Nature's wrath.

"Damn," he muttered to himself. Then, to the passenger: "Hey, you sure you gave me the right address?"

There was another flash of lightning, and the boy answered, "This is the place."

"Hard to believe it." _Perfect place for a mugging_, he thought. The driver reached down by his right thigh and felt the reassuring heft of a .38 pistol tucked securely between the cushion of his seat and the armrest. He hadn't yet been unlucky enough to pick up a psycho, but this was Florida—your luck only lasted for so long. The pistol was for the inevitable day—or night—when his luck ran out.

This night was beginning to look like a pretty likely candidate.

The passenger tapped the driver's shoulder with a bill, then dropped it so that it tumbled onto his lap. "I need you to come back for me," he said. "You can go anywhere you like, but just pick me up in exactly one hour. Right here."

The driver could see by the dashboard light that the bill in his lap was a hundred.

_Why the hell do I get the dealers and the pimps when there's a storm hitting town?_

What he said aloud was, "You got it." He checked his watch, then started his countdown.

The boy nodded his thanks, then opened the side door.

"Hey kid," the driver said. "You need a raincoat or something? I got a plastic hoodie you can borrow in the trunk—"

"Appreciated," the boy said. "But no. I won't be out here for very long."

The driver decided that he didn't want to know.

The boy stepped out of the cab, closed the door, and stood in the rain and the hail while he watched the driver turn his vehicle around and roll off into the distance. Back to civilization. Back to where there were streetlights and neon signs and enough illumination to drive away all the imaginary ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties that haunt the imaginations of rational people everywhere. The boy, meanwhile, stood very still and let the rain and hail soak through his clothing, chilling him to the bone.

It was rare, this coldness. He treasured it, submerging himself into the icy environment until he could no longer see any hint of the cab and the driver. He was alone.

The boy nodded to himself, turned around to face the beach and the oncoming storm, and found himself in a different world.

Where once stood a howling beachside, now was a quiet city street. The asphalt beneath his feet was freshly poured and dry. No rain. No wind. No palm trees. Just a parking lot in front of an old-looking pub, and a flashing neon sign in the window advertising that, yes indeed, there were still places of business that were open this late.

The boy himself was different as well. Gone were the black T-shirt, boots, and jeans, replaced by a black suit that fit too well to be anything but tailor made. His left hand was free of any scar tissue. He rotated his arm, finding that the months-old discomfort was gone, and once again he had full range of motion without pain.

He did not smile or celebrate—it was a given that this was only temporary.

He stepped up to the door and opened it, walking inside without pause to look around. He'd never been here before, but he was intimately familiar with the surroundings just the same. The old man would still be in the corner, writing in his book. Grace would be behind the bar. The pool shark would be gone by now, though—one can only practice so long by oneself before it just gets too boring.

Wally sat on his barstool, his face glowing by the light of a laptop. His was a face that belonged to a guy that had just found out his entire world had been turned upside down.

The boy did not envy him. But he did not pity him, either. Instead, he walked over to the bar, nodded at Grace, and sat down beside the teenager.

The close proximity of their seating arrangement seemed to snap Wally back into the present. He looked over at the boy, who returned his gaze with a level stare. "You," Wally said.

The boy nodded. "I am."

Blinking, Wally paused to find words. "You…are?" He shook his head, as if to separate a flood of thoughts in order to better organize them. "I mean—_who_ are you? I've seen you before."

"Yes, you have." The boy took a moment to dig into his jacket, producing a black credit card that he slid across the bar. "Grace? A guy could die of thirst over here."

The bartendress snatched the card up and placed it behind the counter. "Let the tab begin it's run," she announced. "The usual?"

"The usual. And when you see an empty glass, don't bother asking if a refill's necessary. Simply assume, and pour." The boy returned his attention to his present company. "Wallace, the last time you saw me was a few months ago." He held up his right hand and flexed his index finger. "Robin was giving us all a live presentation on the proper way to disarm someone with a gun."

A glass of some kind of amber liquid was slid down the bar, and the boy caught it without looking. He sipped while Wally connected the dots.

"You mean to tell me," he said slowly, "that you're—_you_—you're the guy who tried to rob us in the 7-Eleven?"

"Guilty." He nodded, and sighed. "Sorry about the bad Tarantino dialogue. But I've got to admit that I really have _no_ idea what one says while knocking over a convenience store."

"And…you're the one that's been sending me these cards."

"The kings. Right again."

"So you've been—this whole time, you've been the one that's responsible for screwing up my life?"

The boy paused, thinking hard, as if giving the question an unreasonable amount of thought. "You could say that," he said. "But then again, you could say that _you're_ the one responsible."

"Why?"

The boy swallowed, and sighed with contentment. "Beg pardon?"

Wally—with very slow, calm, delicate precision, his every motion over-controlled as if to keep tight reigns on his fury—reached out a hand and closed the laptop in front of him. The blue light of its screen disappeared, and the dim light of the bar made him look tired. Weary.

"I may just be a character in a story," he said quietly. "With what's been discovered lately about quantum physics and alternate realities, it even makes a bit of sense—in some way. But if you've had control over me, and—and everything else that's been going on—and now you're _here._"

Here he paused, taking in a shuddering breath. The boy waited.

"_Why_?" There was no other way to put it. "Why make me go through all that? And not just _me_—that poor _woman_, man. If you've had control all this time, what the hell would make you do something like that? Why couldn't you have just made her fight back, or call the cops? Why did you send me to fix it? And—and _Megan_." He looked at the boy with furious, red eyes. "Why did you put me through all that?"

"Pain."

The boy could see that Wally expected more of an explanation, but he said nothing.

"What do you mean?"

The boy sipped at his drink.

Wally slammed a fist forward and knocked the glass out of his hands. "_WHAT do you MEAN?"_

The boy didn't seem to care about the shattered beverage. "Let's take a look back at you a few months ago," he said. "You have just turned seventeen. You go to one of the most privileged schools in the country, but you have no plans on going to college. You live in the same building as the girl of your dreams, but you never do anything about it. You make your money by tutoring rich kids—a job that, face it, enables you to work only a few hours each week. You have friends, but you barely know anything about them. You have neighbors, but you don't know their names. You have no idea what to do in an emergency, or how to defend yourself, or how to talk to a pretty girl, or where your life is headed."

The boy paused as Grace slid another fresh glass down the bar.

"You make passable grades. You spend eight hours a day in front of a screen. You cook your meals in microwaves and spend your evenings watching porn."

"I get it," Wally muttered. "I get it, okay? I'm a loser."

"Far from it. You're a teenager."

Wally said nothing.

"Thing is, Wally, you also had dreams. You wanted to be somebody. You wanted to be known among the greats, didn't you? But you had no idea how to get there."

"So you send me to hell?"

"I sent you _outside_. In more ways than one." The boy gestured with his thumb towards the bar door. "You think my world's any different than yours? You think that it's easy for guys to flirt with girls, or that nobody gets abused? There's a _reason_ you're not running around as a superhero right now dressed in red and yellow tights—I put you into the _real_ world, my friend. That way you could experience _real_ pain."

"But why pain?" Wally looked down at his palms, where the scabs of falling had finally gone away. "Life sucks, and then you die. Is that what you're trying to teach?"

"No. Say, instead, that life hurts and then you grow. Did you know that back in the old days, there were tribes of Native Americans that thought pain was a god? That pain was their teacher, forcing them to find better ways of doing things?" He took a moment to slide his new drink, untouched, in front of Wally. "You had your heart broken. You felt alone. You almost committed suicide. Then you almost committed murder."

"_You_ almost made me do it, devil."

"I knew you wouldn't do it. In the story of your life, what kind of ending would you prefer? Suicide? That's not a good story. Happily Ever After is kind of a cliché, but it does happen from time to time for a few lucky ones, and I myself intend to be one of them, honestly."

Wally looked down at the drink, but didn't touch it. "What kind of ending are you going to give me, then?"

"That's not quite the way this story works." The boy pointed at himself. "I don't really dress like this in my world. But I'm on a path that will eventually enable me to. Right now, I'm really wearing old jeans and T-shirts that haven't been replaced for years. I live in a rundown apartment with no dishwasher, no microwave, and the water heater is broken so I have to take cold showers every morning. My girlfriend just broke up with me—same time that Megan broke your heart, come to think of it. And to top it all off, I'm running out of money and I'm a few months away from going bankrupt."

Wally said nothing.

The boy said, "Do I look worried?"

Wally said nothing.

"You don't have to say anything. Because I'm _not_ worried. I'm moving forward. I'm taking steps that are going to make me a millionaire before I turn thirty. I'm experiencing the worst of life's pain _now_, so that I don't have to feel the pain of regret when I'm in my forties and discovering that life has passed me by. Instead, I'm going to retire at a ridiculously young age and live Happily Ever After. What are _your_ plans?"

Still, Wally said nothing. He just looked down at the drink in front of him, gazing into its amber glow like it might provide a modicum of comfort, somehow.

The boy didn't wait very long for an answer.

"Now, I told you that I'm not going to give you a happy ending, and here's why. Let's take a look at where you are now. You have three very good friends, and you're a tightly knit group. There's a cute blonde out there who is kind of attracted to you. You have a job. You have a pretty nice place now to call your own. You have one more year of high school, then you're free to make your own way. You've learned a bit of self-defense, and you're going to learn a thing or two from your wingman, Connor. That all combines to create one thing: momentum."

"I don't follow." He placed two hands around the glass, dropping his nose down to smell it.

"Wallace, I'm not giving you a Happily Ever After, because I'm not going to give you an ending, period. I'm leaving that part up to you. Right now you're on a pretty sweet path that can lead you through an awesome life. You can become a famous scientist, or a drunk on the side of the road. You can make pickup and seduction your life, and eventually die like Casanova did: alone, courtesy of a plethora of STDs. You can do whatever you want. And if you decide on nothing, you'll do nothing."

"You make it sound easy."

"No, I make it sound _simple_. It's not easy. And it's not quick, either. Not from what I can tell."

"Dude, what if I don't know what I want?" He picked the glass up, but didn't drink. "I'm seventeen. I don't even know if I want to go to college or not."

The boy shrugged. "I don't have all the answers. Plenty of the world's greatest people never went to college. Hell, _I_'ve never been to college."

"And you want to be a millionaire before you turn thirty?"

"Not like I'd be the first." The boy checked his watch.

Wally noticed. "Don't tell me you've got to go."

"Eventually. But not yet." He made another wave to Grace, and she passed a second glass down to his waiting hand. Holding it up, the boy nodded a silent toast to Wally. "To tomorrow." He tossed it back and swallowed the entire thing.

Wally looked back at his own drink. "What is this stuff?"

"My personal favorite. Made it myself, try it."

"It doesn't even have a smell."

"Wallace, do us both a favor and drink, instead of trying to sound like a liquor connoisseur."

"Hey, just saying." Wally took a small breath, closed his eyes, and tilted the drink to his lips. He swallowed, roughly, before his eyes shot open and he glared at the boy.

"It's apple juice."

"Really? Huh. Must've let it set too long."

* * *

Some time later, the duo exited the pub together, and found that it was raining. They stood beneath an doorway overhang while they waited for their respective rides.

"So what now?" Wally asked.

"I told you. You get to do whatever you like."

"I meant you. If what you've told me is true, I'm really supposed to be a superhero? I wouldn't mind being in a story about that."

The boy was silent. There was something in his posture—the way he avoided looking at anything at all—that made Wally nervous.

"You _are_ going to keep writing, right? Hopefully something with a lot more sex?"

He said nothing.

"I was thinking that the title of your next fic could be_ Wally West Woos the Women_, or something. Maybe _Wally West and the Amazonian Island Girls."_

"The Amazons would probably beat you to death," the boy smiled. It was tinged with sadness. "Actually, I've been thinking that I'm going to have to stop writing."

Now it was Wally's turn to go quiet.

"Don't get me wrong. I love getting this stuff out of my head, and the reviewers have been fantastic." He noticed that the rain began to fall even heavier, and tiny shutter-blinks of lightning occurred in the distance. "But I've got a lot of other things to focus on right now. It wouldn't be fair to anyone for me to only update chapters once every three months or so. I've got a lot to do. And, I have to confess that I'm running low on ideas."

Wally looked at the boy for a long time. The boy didn't say anything. Eventually, Wally turned his attention out to the night. They stood like that for several minutes, sharing a companionable silence.

"Storm's getting worse."

"It always does," the boy said softly.

"Well. You do whatever you have to, man."

"Thanks."

"You know something?" Wally asked, looking back at the face of the pub. "I'm curious. Why do you drink apple juice in a bar?"

This brought a smile to the boy's lips, and he looked at his drinking partner. "Because I've already tried nearly every other type of liquor you can find in there. And when it comes down to it, apple juice just tastes better."

"Think if I go back in there a few nights from now, Grace'll let me have a beer without carding me?"

"No idea."

His watch beeped.

It was time to go.

The two faced each other. Wally held his hand out, and the boy shook it.

"Wally," the boy said, and his voice rang with earnestness. "Don't let yourself sink back into the mud of life. Keep moving forward. Especially when you're going through hell."

"I though you weren't going to tell me what to do?"

He chuckled. "Maybe I'm just talking to myself."

"Shut up, then. You sound like an idiot." Wally punched the boy's shoulder once again, and asked, without even realizing the purpose of the question: "Why did you choose kings?"

The boy raised one eyebrow.

"You could've used Aces. They're cooler, and more powerful than a king. So why not use them?"

The boy stepped out to the rain—now laced with tiny hailstones—and spoke over his shoulder as he walked deeper into the darkness. "Because that's what we are, Wallace. You and I. We rule over our own lives the way a king rules over his kingdom. Right now, all we can do is keep doing our best, and try to become Aces." And with that he faced forward and continued walking.

The downpour of rain became deafening. The boy did not look back.

Wally said his farewells, anyway.

"Good luck, Venusian."

His words did not carry through the storm. But the boy knew them.

And with a few more steps, the evening darkness surrounded him. The cold returned, bone-deep and frigid. Off in the distance a pair of headlights winked around a corner and headed straight for him.

When the cabbie rolled up next to him, the boy—once again in T-shirt and jeans—had to use his good arm to open the door awkwardly, sliding into the warm confines of the cab and sinking into the seat gratefully.

"Gotta be crazy," the cabbie was muttering. "Radio says there's a tornado not twenty miles from here. Entire county's under a watch." He turned in his seat to look back at the boy. "You get your business taken care of?"

"All that," he said, "and more."

"Good to hear. Now let's get the hell out of here before a tsunami comes or somethin'."

The cab executed a U-turn, and the boy took one last look out into the night. He was leaving a lot of things behind him. Time. Effort. Energy. They had all been invested, and in heavy amounts of all three, into the story. It was enough. The message was out. Now he could move on with his life.

And as he sunk deeper into the cushions, letting the chill leave his bones, he felt the ever-present reminder of his story that he carried with him in his left pocket. It was a deck of cards. A full deck of cards.

Minus four.

The boy's eyes closed, as if he were laying down to sleep. He smiled to himself.

Stop writing?

No.

Not yet.

Already, the plot for the next great story was beginning to bury itself deep inside his mind.

* * *

**The author would like to thank the following:**

**First and foremost, Markus Zusak, for writing the top notch book **_**I am the Messenger**_**, and inspiring me to write this story. For those of you that enjoyed this, I suggest you read his work.**

**Next, we have you guys! The readers, the reviewers, those of you who sent all those private messages to me—your constant feedback and outright demands for more chapters are what kept me writing through some pretty rough times. I hope you enjoyed, and I look forward to doing it again.**

**Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti, for being the spearhead of the greatest superhero show ever. Thank you for showing the world—again—that a kid's cartoon isn't just for kids, that said cartoon can have levels of maturity and quality that most shows never bother to aspire to, and for keeping all us viewers on our toes.**

**Senior Instructors Kubiyanka and Cohen, of Krav Maga Miami, for helping Robin teach Wally a little bit about self-defense, and keeping me grounded enough to finish what I start. (Oh, and the lessons on disarming grenades was pretty fun, too). I respectfully bow to you, sirs.**

**Eben and Eric, for helping Connor introduce to Wally a few lessons on the love game.**

**To V, for the breakup.**

**To M, for the pain lessons.**

**And to Mom and Dad, who—though you may have no idea where I'm going with my life—you guys still trust me enough to let me find my own way. I love you both.**

**See you all at the next story.**


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